. . . . Chapter 1 Grandpa’s House . . . .

 

At the back of Grandpa’s house there was a snowball tree.  Many times I would see my grandpa there, in the shade of that tree, sitting in one of the Muskoka chairs. He usually had a beer in his hand, and it had to be a Labatts 50.
 

George Kirkham had been raised on a farm at Loch Erne located outside Parry Sound, Ontario and I think he enjoyed the solitude in the shade of that tree. He found comfort outside, sitting, contemplating, and watching time slide past.  
 

It was during those warm summer days that I would like to sink down in a chair next to him. I remember taking the cribbage board and cards with me, and the arm rests made a great place to have a game or two. I can't say we talked a great deal during those games, or if we did, I can't say that I remember much of the conversations. Grandpa wasn’t the talkative type.

 

Grandpa always looks the same to me in my memories. George is never bald, but he certainly has thin graying hair. From the point of view of a ten year old, physically, my grandpa always seemed so tall. Actually he was only 5’7”, but because he had such a thin frame he seemed taller. He wore canvas pants and always used suspenders to hold them up, and in his waist pocket, he carried his pocket watch.
His old age was always visible by the way he moved.  All the time that I knew him he walked with a stoop. Being a carpenter and labourer his whole life, it is not surprising that Popup (the grandchildren called him “Popup”) had a bad back.
 

Grandpa was someone we saw daily. From our TV room we could look right into grandpa's kitchen. I often saw him at the kitchen table or next to it on his cot.  He didn’t venture far from that cot in his later years.
 

He used the cot for napping and as his smoking chair. Grandpa, after all, was a chain smoker. He always rolled his own cigarettes from a can of Export A kept within arm’s reach.  When he wasn’t puffing on a cigarette, it was his pipe. I borrowed one from him once, the pipe that is, in Grade 7 to use as a prop in a play.
 

Popup wasn’t the only tenant in the next door house. Along with George lived Gerry and Anna. Both these boarders lived in the house for a long time. I’m not even sure how this happened, but I know they were company for Popup. Anna, who spoke with a thick German accent, did most of the cooking for the group. She owned a little French poodle called Trouble. That dog is the reason I hate that breed to this day. Anna eventually built a cottage on the Backfield Bay on Lorimer Lake Road on land acquired from my Great Uncle Ed. Gerry was a good drinking buddy for Popup, and in the end, I think alcohol contributed to his death.  
 

The best part of living next door were the parties when the Kirkham clan showed up. For the grandkids this was a chance to run around unsupervised looking for adventures. The adults paid little attention to us kids. The aunts would be sitting and gossiping in the front room. The men could be found in the kitchen playing nickel and dime poker, 7 card stud and Chicago. These were the usual games of chance-with Grandpa right in the middle of things.  Ah, if things were really going right they had Crown Royal to pour instead of the usual CC, Canadian Club. The kitchen would be thick with smoke from the pipes and cigarettes. Lucky 7’s for my mom. This was a time when we cousins were subjected to most of our second hand smoke.
 

In between all the parties, the relatives would show up for Sunday visits. Grandpa’s house was the central hub of the Kirkham clan. Uncle Joe was a regular visitor. His dad lived just across Lakeshore Road on Maple Avenue, so he had double the reason to make the trip from Hamilton. It was at Uncle Joe's father’s house that I tasted ginger beer. Not the Canadian Ginger Ale kind, but the real ginger beer. I couldn’t say that I enjoyed it.
   

Grandpa’s house was always a scary and mysterious place. My sister, Heather, to this day, believes the house was haunted. Heather’s ghost story has something to do with an apparition appearing at the end of the bed when she and dad were sleeping over one night. From a youngster’s point of view there were many secret places and hiding spots. As kids we were not sure what could be lurking around the next corner.
 

One scary place was the basement, which doubled as a root cellar. It was never finished and was dark and damp. There was always a cob web or two just to add to the creepy atmosphere. The root cellar part had a wooden door that when opened, creaked, just to emphasize the spookiness of the place. Whenever you found yourself in the cellar you never lingered. It was ‘get the case of beer and get out!’
 

Secret hiding places could be found throughout the house. There was a space under the steps leading up to the second story bedrooms. Hiding there one time at the annual Christmas party, I found a treasure trove of Christmas presents. I discovered a rifle set that looked pretty good. This must have been the hiding place for all those years when I could never find the presents in our house.  Disappointed. That is all I can say when it wasn't one of the presents that I found underneath our Christmas tree. I never figured out who got those gifts.

 

The scariest part of the house was the hole in the floor that you could see from the front room into the upstairs. Originally, the house was warmed by the kitchen wood stove and a coal burning stove in the front room. Even in the 1960s I can remember seeing the wood stove still being used for cooking. The hole allowed the heat a way to get to the second floor and warm the bedrooms. You would stay clear of that hole when walking around upstairs, making sure you didn't step in it and fall to certain death to the ground floor below.
 

Grandpa’s house was a second home. We never needed to knock when entering. We would run in and out of the house many times without even saying hi. We often ran through the house up to the bathroom located upstairs.  We realized one day that we could see the side of our house from that bathroom window. When we played kick the can, which we did often, we discovered that we could see the "it" person from the window. Our partner, usually my brother Gary, would hide around the corner of our house. Through a series of hand gestures and signals, we could either warn the other players to hide, or let them know that it was okay to take a run at the can.  I don’t think Johnny Wilson ever figured out why he was “it” for so long.  
 

Along with the upstairs bathroom were the three bedrooms.  The ‘master’ bedroom was the largest room. This was where George and Grandma Blanche slept. I did the math one day and realized there were nine kids and two parents in the house. Where did they all sleep? According to my mother, the boys were in one room, the girls in the other. The older brothers and sisters at one time or another would have shared beds, but by my mom’s time they had left the house. Mom remembers three to a bed. In her time it was Isobel, Leitha and Mom. Down the hall it was Bruce and Bobby.
 

With the crowded bedrooms the older siblings found it motivating to move out of the house at the earliest possible opportunity. Maybe this should be a strategy to use today to encourage those ‘20-something’ children to move on.

 
. . . . Uncle Bruce . . . .

 

 

There were many times that we were left at my grandfather’s house. One time I was watching the old black and white TV and sitting on the couch in the little sitting room off the main dining room. The Family Bible was there and I pulled it out. It belonged to my grandmother, Blanche Kirkham (Haselhurst). I leafed through the pages and in the back was a ‘deaths page.’ Someone had written in two names. One was my Uncle Bruce Kirkham’s name with the date August 25, 1958.

 

Uncle Bruce, born in 1937, was the youngest of the children. Like all the Kirkham children, he had first attended Riverside Elementary School. This was the school that the Kirkham and Blemings’ children would all attend. Mr. Gilhardt, my principal, had been the same principal that my mom and Bruce had when they attended school in the early 1940s.
 

Bruce next attended Port Credit Secondary School-not the new campus that the Blemings’ received their education, but the old one south of the tracks. Bruce graduated Grade 12 in June of 1955 and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force on June 29th. Graduating in 1956 was fortunate for Bruce because the following October much of the high school burned down.
 

Bruce attained the rank of Flight Officer when he completed flight school. This is equivalent to a lieutenant in the army. Just twenty years old- this was quite an accomplishment. After his initial training as a navigator, Flight Officer Bruce Kirkham was posted to France. The Royal Canadian Air Force maintained a fighter squadron as part of Canada’s commitment to NATO during the Cold War.
 

There was a big party in our basement to wish Bruce farewell. There was the usual dancing, drinking, and smoking that accompanied any Kirkham party. This was the last time that we (even though I would have only been 3) were to see Bruce.
 

When you’re a kid you remember stories that you later learn weren’t necessarily true. Maybe I heard the story wrong, or like parents did back then, the story was changed to make it a little easier to explain. I always believed that Uncle Bruce’s plane had crashed during an air show in Paris. The actual truth was a bit different, but they did get the country right.
 

On August 25, 1958, Flight Officer Kirkham or Squeeze as he was nicknamed, was flying with the 423rd All Weather Fighter Squadron in a CF100 as the backseat navigator. The squadron airbase was located in Grostenquin, France. Approaching the runway coming in for landing was a flight of four jets. At about 300 feet something went terribly wrong. On the landing approach two aircraft were involved in a midair collision. The navigator in the second plane managed to eject but the pilot died. F/O Kirkham’s plane crashed into the base hospital and both he and the pilot were killed.
 

The day after the crash a big black car pulled up to our driveway. Two official looking military types got out of the car and disappeared into my grandfather’s house. A little later one of the officers came over to our house to break the news to my mother. He thought it important that a family member should go over to the house to help Blanche. My sister Heather who was six at the time, just remembers seeing my grandmother crying and not really understanding why.
 

I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for my parents to share this news with my grandparents about my Uncle Bruce. Again the family gathered, but this time for a memorial.  Not all gatherings that happened at 24 Broadview Avenue have happy memories

.
. . . . Grandma  Blanche  Kirkham . . . .

 

The second name in the Bible was my grandmother, Blanche Kirkham.  Blanche had been a Haselhurst from McKellar which was located just down the road from our cottage lake at Loch Erne.  The Haselhurst family had been in the area since 1875 and had a farm just outside of town. Blanche was the oldest of eight children. True to her rural roots, Blanche participated in several Port Credit organizations.  She was an executive member of the Riverside home and school as well as the IODE, which was the women’s league of the United Church. She was a member of these two groups for many years and as such was a prominent citizen of early Port Credit.
 

The date in the Bible for Blanche’s death was just a few months after my Uncle Bruce’s death. It was, in my young mind, a simple case of cause and effect, a broken heart. Again I was to learn the real story.
 

Grandma Blanche was a very religious person and had just walked home from the United Church located just off the Lakeshore at Mississauga Road. She was in the kitchen talking with Grandpa when she just collapsed. It apparently was a brain aneurism. Because Uncle Bruce and Grandma both died when I was young, I sadly have no memory of either. Still, I have this deep interest in family history, and I think seeing those names in the Bible somehow stirred those strong family feelings.
 

. . . . History . . . .

 

 

Grandpa’s house was full of history from the kitchen wood stove to the dining room armoire. What always drew my attention was a picture of Grandpa in his army uniform that hung on the wall in the dining room.  My grandfather had fought in the Great War, and I was always intrigued by Grandpa’s participation in World War 1.
 

In my younger years I would often run into the house to find an empty chair next to Grandpa. It was during one of those talks over a game of cribbage that Grandpa mentioned the war years.
 

During this particular conversation, Popup talked about how he had broken his leg during the war. This is when my ears perked up. I remember the story as him being shot in the leg. I raced home and quizzed my father about it. He confirmed Popop’s story. I remember my mother being confused by this, as she maintained that he had indeed been shot. I always wondered why the story had changed. Again, family stories handed down by word of mouth can easily morph into a different reality.
 

From the talks to the picture, it was obvious to me that Grandpa was proud to have fought during the war. Even when Grandpa was well into his seventies, he still walked to the Canadian Legion that was located over by the Credit River to socialize with others who had shared his war experiences. After a night at the local Legion, George would come home and throw his hat up the stairs and ask,”Is it okay to come in?” “ Yes,” was the usual answer. His trips to the Legion were the only times I saw him leave the yard except to go to the cottages. I wish we had talked more about his war experiences, but I am sure that those memories for George were a longtime buried. Again, it would take some time to learn the story of those years.