Darlene Cennon

Darlene Ellen writes: The original Lindberg homestead, nine miles east and half a mile north of Dundurn, was my birthplace at 5:30 p.m., Sunday, October 11, 1925. Rumour has it I was born feet first, which may have been a shadow of things to come. Nine brothers preceded me so it was an auspicious occasion when a female entered the family. So that I should not be too pleased with myself, the boys always told they were in the barn, looking at the colt, Dan, at the time and only mildly interested in the new baby in the house. Over the years their actions belied their words, however, because they rode herd on “Sister” closely, much to my chagrin at times. They, for some reason, expected me to be perfect and were totally disappointed! My earliest memories are of being with Dad and brother Bob. One vivid memory is of seeing a man up on a ladder (which, from my three-year-old stature, looked halfway to the moon) applying stucco to the east side of a brand new building, Wall Lake School. I still hear Dad’s voice saying, “This is where you will go to school”. That opened up a whole new world of thought to me. Bob and I went with Dad in the truck to Dundurn quite often and it seemed to me Dad would purposely start an argument between the two of us (Bob and I didn’t really need much prompting!) about whether the sign at the top of the Blackstrap said, “Go Slow Danger” or “Danger, Go Slow”. It was a triangular sign so we were both right but, of course, Dad didn’t tell us that.

Memories of mother are not too clear; she was ill a good deal of the time. My nephews, Howard and Frank, (Joel’s boys) came to live with us in 1931 when their mother Mary died. There were eleven of us at the table; it was like having two little brothers. We did have fun. Mama’s sense of fun and gaiety would shine through now and then and I remember the look of love on her face when she looked at her “boys”, all of them handsome, nice guys who loved her very much in return. The first nine years of my life were happy ones: family Christmas, Sunday dinners, nieces and nephews all around. When Mama died on April 12, 1935, life for me became grim. Many had the correct notion I was very spoiled and I would just have to be cured of that, so while Dad was so deep in his grief, I became very confused by the helping hands around me. One friend I shall never forget was Mrs. Anna Whitacre, who had been my mother’s friend and mentor. Dad often left me with her when he went to Dundurn. It was she who sewed clothes for me, who taught me about things feminine. She had a fairyland house with pretty covers on her couches and each bedroom decorated in special colours. Her garden was full of lovely fragrant flowers, not just potatoes and turnips. Maurine, her daughter, taught me piano for a little while and Roberta was my first teacher. All three had a great influence on me. Mama Whitacre taught me faith in God, a real living faith. Piano lessons didn’t last because I soon decided I could play just as well by ear. Not true. I wish with all my heart I had kept with the lessons; I still play the Hammond organ but feel limited in what I play; I should have kept on!

In 1937, brother Jim (Alvin) and I seemed to spend a lot of time alone when Dad and the other boys were out working, trucking or whatever they could find to do. Jim’s loving good humour was what made life bearable in those terrible drought years. We made music in the parlour and sang. I was deathly afraid of thunderstorms and we had wicked ones. Jim would come in and reassure me not to be scared, it would be over. He even spent his hard-earned money to buy me the fur-trimmed overshoes which were my heart’s desire at the time. Never will I forget him.

It was some time later that Iva and brother Ralph came to live at home for the winters. Iva the sister I didn’t know I had missed until she came to stay. We had wonderful singsongs and it was somewhere in this time we played for dances and I earned money by doing it. I bought my own clothes one winter; the thrill of receiving my twelve dollar coat from Eaton’s catalogue has never been surpassed.

My best memories of school were the Christmas concerts, the fun and thrill of show business (which my children have found, I guess). Those breathless, fearful first minutes when the curtains opened and I was on. I had (have) a good singing voice and enjoyed performing very much. During the thirties (and yes, they really were dirty), the men of the neighbourhood built an outdoor rink which was a godsend. It did what people today would call “keeping the kids off the street”. We skated all winter, watching and cheering our hockey team on against Bradwell, Sunny Valley and others. There were schoolhouse dances on Friday nights, for which our little band played a lot of the time, and in summer had barn dances at home, attended by people from miles around. The excitement of those nights still comes back to me. But as I grew up, the biggest night of the week became Saturday night when we went to Bradwell to the dance. Bradwell, it always seemed to me, had more than its fair share of good looking young men. By now it was 1939-40 – wartime – and life changed altogether. It became a series of joyful hellos and tearful goodbyes, mixed up romances, broken hearts and tragedies. Many people in the area lost sons in that terrible time.

In 1942, I attended Saskatoon Technical Collegiate, taking the Special Commercial Course, and did exceptionally well in everything but bookkeeping. I have a mental block when it comes to math. My dad had to practically pound me on the head to help me learn my multiplication tables!

While at Tech I dated and fell in love with a young man, Jack Cennon. We danced a lot, saw movies and had fun until he went overseas in August, 1943. Our correspondence carried on for 2-1 / 2 years and things dissolved in April, 1945.

Anyway, I did become what I always wanted to be, a secretary, and at age seventeen, I went alone on a train to Ottawa in June, 1943. There I made many friends where I worked in the steno pool of the Dependents Allowance & Assigned Pay branch of the Finance Department. I was there six months when Dad came to visit, took a look at the boy I was going out with, and hauled me off to Niagara Falls where I lived for nearly two years with my brother Ray and his wife Frances. They were so good to me; I was what people today would call a rotten teenager. There I worked for a tough man named Evan Young, and jolly giant named Don Vicary. They educated me into the secretary profession and I came home in early 1945, full of self-confidence and sure I was the best in the business. It was very strange to be home again after what seemed ages away but nothing had changed particularly except by now there was an expectancy that the war would soon end and life would go on as before.

After a few weeks at home with Dad, Ralph and Iva, I moved to Saskatoon to work. I stayed with Jean, Bob’s wife, and their two youngsters at her parents’ house at 1118 Spadina Crescent. Jack and Marion MacDermid had been away in Ottawa for most of the war where he served with the army, and in August, they came back home, Bob returned from the Airforce and we all lived under that one large roof. It was a very happy year for me. The MacDermids had adopted me along with Bob when he married Jean so I always felt that I belonged partly to them. I remember being in one of my moods and on one of our long Sunday morning walks, Jack, saying very kindly to me, “You know, Darlene, if you would just do something for someone else – be helpful – you’d feel a lot better”. It worked and never have I forgotten that – or them. They were good friends until the end.

During the year of 1945, I worked at the Great West Saddlery with a pretty red-haired girl named Olive Jean Harris. We became friends and I often went to her house for big, noisy, happy suppers with her family. O.J. showed me a picture of her brother, Jack, who was working in Toronto. He had graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a Bachelor of Engineering in Ceramics the spring of 1943 and had gone east. In October he came home on vacation to see his family. After a week of cajoling, manipulation and subterfuge (we were both disillusioned with the opposite sex at that time), Olive Jean finally introduced me to her handsome, unmarried brother. Having taken Mr. MacDermid’s advice, I was baby-sitting for Bob and Jean, and during the course of the evening, two celebrants, an airman and a sailor returning from the wars, invaded the living room. They were both old friends from Bradwell. I was busy parrying words with these two when O.J. and Jack arrived, unexpectedly. I was completely unnerved and wondered what her brother must think – especially as one of the boys kept saying, “Will you marry me, Darlene?” I handled it as best I could, asked them if they would like some coffee, and then admitted I didn’t know how to make coffee so Jack and O.J. made it. During all this, Jack and I fell in love. I saw him twice more before he went back to Toronto. We said goodbye at the train November, 1945, wrote letters all winter, became engaged by air mail and married May 4, 1946.

With this handsome young stranger, now my husband, I returned to the east, lived at his boarding house, then into a flat of our own next to the Dunlop Rubber Company in Toronto East, next to the gas works, a bakery, a tannery and a slaughterhouse. The combination of smells was horrendous, so we could not open our windows. We stayed about four months and then moved to Wesson where Jack’s company, AP GreenRefractories, was newly located. In Weston, we lived with friends in two small rooms in their upstairs (you must remember that housing during and after the war was impossible). We were living in these two rooms when our firstborn, John Alexander, came on the scene February 13, 1948. We had three chests of drawers, one each, a crib, a sofa bed and a radio. There was a small kitchen with a rangette. One could use the oven and one burner on top or two burners on top and no oven. No wonder my cooking was so bad! In December, 1948, we were transferred to Montreal. Mary Ellen was born October 1, 1949. Thomas Arthur came along March 5, 1953, followed in short order by Nancy Darlene on June 26, 1954. Robert David arrived July 22, 1956, and Elisabeth Anne and Barbara Jean, (the prettiest babies you’ve ever seen) -it rhymes- came June 16, 1958. We were not expecting twins! Lynda Jane, our grande finale, blessed us with her lively presence February 21, 1962.

By now Jack was Eastern Regional Manager. Life, as you can imagine, was hectic but happy. Dad came down every winter to spend a month in our menagerie and went gratefully home, I suspect, at the end of that time. He did love our little ones, though.

In April 1966, Jack had his first heart attack. Heart patients were kept flat on their back for at least three weeks. It was a terrible blow to all of us, especially to Jack who was so strong and we thought healthy. We transferred to Toronto for a brief ten-month period in 1967, during which our dear old house stood empty. Then we happily moved home again.

In 1968, I started work as a secretary, working with Dr. Allana Reid-Smith, vice-principal at John Rennie High School. Dr. Smith was the original feminist and I learned a great deal from her. It was the delight of the office staff to see five Harrises arrive to collect their lunch money from Mama.

In Pointe Claire, we lived at #1 Tampico Avenue, on the corner. It was a big lot with huge old trees that Jack had preserved when they built the house. There was a large open space just south of the house, next to the adjoining street. This turned out to be the best playground in the neighbourhood and many games of football, calisthenics, or just plain old wrestling took place out there.

What was it like to bring twins home to a round-eyed family of five, the oldest only ten at the time – the feeling of never being done with the laundry – the piles of dishes which I must say the children learned to do very early in their lives! Somehow the drudgery of it all disappears into the mist and all I can remember are shiny, clean faces with cherubic grins as I tucked them in at night, our suppers with Jack at the other end of the big table and our wonderful family, the controlled conversations, no fights at the table! There was always room for an extra friend or two at our table. I also recall finding brussel sprouts and things like squash or parsnips hidden under napkins when it was clearing up time.

In July, 1971, we were transferred to Moncton, New Brunswick and bought an old farmhouse where we followed a different lifestyle as I worked full-time. By now, we had only four children at home and those in high school hated New Brunswick. But in spite of their discontent, there were happy times: snowball fights in the big yard, howling blizzards that reminded me of the prairies, days on the ocean at Shediac, lobster feeds, and big, noisy parties at home with some of our friends and business associates, and the friends of our kids who visited often from Montreal.

On a rainy April 24, 1973, Jack died. Even though we had known it was to come, it was a shock to us all. We finished off the school year in Moncton, then I gave up my job, sold the house and we moved for the third time into our little house at #1 Tampico. Brother Carl and Mary came down to help me move and get the house ready to sell. They stayed on for about three weeks and, bless them, helped us get settled again. The years between 1973 and 1976 saw most of my family grow up and finish high school.

The move west to Saskatoon came in August, 1976. Lynda and I lived in an apartment. Then I bought a condominium in Wildwood Village. I worked eleven years with Potash Company of America as secretary to the General Manager, a job which was satisfying and especially pleasant because of the fine folk with whom I worked. I retired in 1988.

After some years of consideration and a series of events, all of which seemed to say “this is meant to be,” I moved to Canmore from Saskatoon in 1993. Since then, I have been very happy – I love the mountains and three years ago, I married my pre-war childhood sweetheart, Jack Cennon. We have found a niche in the Canmore scene, and though we both miss Saskatchewan, our home is here. He, in spite of himself, has learned to love my dog Treena!

We are active in the Seniors and are very happy in our new (old) partnership and grateful to be together for our remaining time. Altogether, we have thirteen children, twenty-nine grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and a fourth generation in the making – not a bad record for two “youngsters” from Saskatchewan.

We are grateful to the fine folk of Canmore who have welcomed us and made us part of their community.