Faith Walker

By Catherine A Serez

I emerge from the womb, into the light.
The cord is severed.
First breath with virgin lungs.
I am gathered up, washed, weighed, wrapped.
I do not return to this place -there is no going back.
Into a tapestry of richly woven cords I am flung.
I bleed -Cancer, Confusion, Conflict.
I see -Death, Destruction, Deliverance.
I breathe -Heaven, Hope, H e a l i n g.
The tapestry bursts brilliant.
The Weaver grins.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781620951422

Book preview

me!"

Part 1

Preparing the Loom

This is what the Lord says: "Stand at the crossroads and look;

ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and

walk

in it, and you will find rest for your souls."

(Jeremiah 6:16, NIV)

Fly

Fly, fly hands of time

Quickly by my window pane

Through the spring and summer time

‘Til the snow comes ‘round again

Babes in arms don’t linger long

They toddle as you sing your song

And then they turn and sing their song to you

Yesterday the leaves were falling

But today the sun is calling

Come and feel my warmth before I fly

Chapter One: Betty

Betty Heaney was born on May 7, 1932, in Ligoniel, Northern Ireland, to a working class couple who for generations had worked in the linen mills of Belfast.

Betty, the eldest of four, had three siblings known as our Billy, our Victor, and wee Phyllis. Like her parents before her, by the time she was fourteen years old, Betty had joined the workforce.

After the Second World War, the family was forced to split up, temporarily living in different relatives’ homes. Betty and Phyllis lived with their grandmother in Emerson’s Row while her brothers, mother, and father lived with a cousin on Lesley Street.

At 7:30 every morning, lunch bag in hand, Betty took the tram from Emerson’s Row up to Wolf Hill Lane, where her father would be waiting. Rain or shine, side by side they walked at a steady pace the rest of the way to the Wolf Hill Linen Mill.

Betty cherished those morning walks. They talked about everyday occurrences. He was a very good listener, so if something was ever bothering her, she would talk it over with her daddy, who never failed to give her the advice she needed.

Betty learned early on that hard work would earn her a pretty penny. Emerson’s Mill was a flax and linen mill and was a part of the Doagh Flax Spinning Company. For four years, Betty worked preparing the large bobbins for winding at Wolf Hill until she moved to Emerson’s Mill.

At Emerson’s, Betty’s job was much the same, but it was mandatory for employees of Emerson’s to wear a protective jacket over their clothes. Cleanliness took on greater importance as synthetic fibres were introduced into the weave, producing a whiter colour in the thread.

It was at Emerson’s that Betty was paired with Lilly McQuade on the large bobbin machine. Gigantic whirring belts surrounded by protective bars rose to the height of the thirty-foot ceiling, giving power to the noisy machines.

Betty would stand at one end of the machine and Lilly at the other. Workers would wheel in giant baskets full of yarn.

Betty and Lilly placed the giant balls of yarn on the spindles located at the top of the machine and then proceeded to thread every one of the approximately seventy-five bobbins.

At each end of the machine were levers used to turn the machine off and on.

When the bobbins were ready, one of the workers would engage the lever and everyone would work their way to the opposite end, making sure there were no breaks in the line. If the yarn broke, they would stop that particular bobbin, repair the yarn, and set it spinning again until all the bobbins were full and the process started over.

As Betty was Protestant and Lilly was Catholic, they were unlikely friends. But the two were so evenly matched in diligence and temperament that together they prepared great numbers of bobbins and were heavily relied on to do piecework.

Lilly’s sister Peg also worked in the mill and, until the day of Lilly’s death, Betty, Lilly, and Peg were great friends.

Betty was a great asset to the mill, and many expected her to live out her days as her ancestors had. But young Betty dreamed of adventure beyond the likes of linen and flax.

Betty had a great aunt, Lizzie, who lived in Canada. When Aunt Lizzie came to Belfast for a visit, Betty was captivated as she talked about all the modern and wonderful things across the Atlantic. She dreamed of one day living in Canada, too, and when Aunt Lizzie returned home Betty began to write letters to her about this.

Betty worked and waited until her twenty-first birthday. Although her daddy fully expected that she would come running home within six months, as her mother before her had done, he finally consented to a Canadian visit.

But Betty was determined to make a go of it and in the summer of 1953, at twenty-one years of age, she waved goodbye to her home and loved ones and made the voyage across the sea.

Chapter Two: New Life

Two years later, in 1955, Victor and Billy came to Canada. It wasn’t until November 1962, after the death of their father, that Betty’s mother Annie and her sister Phyllis made the voyage.

On her arrival, Betty moved in with Aunt Lizzie on Jones Avenue in Toronto.

After three weeks with Aunt Lizzie, she found a job at Bell Canada as a telephone operator where she passed the time occasionally listening in on interesting conversations. She particularly empathized with young lovers who found themselves far apart from one another.

She also made some wonderful and lasting friendships while working at the Bell. Among them were Valerie Brown, Margaret Smith, Pam Dennis, and Joan Lilly, who remains one of Betty’s dearest friends even today.

While wasting no time making friends, Betty took to the modern conveniences like a dog to water and occasionally dropped a Ligoniel-bound package in the mail.

One such package arrived one day containing a box full of mesh bags. Inside the bags were tea leaves. Bobby and Annie looked at each other in astonishment.

Now why would they go and do that? exclaimed Bobby. Now we have to cut them all open to get at the leaves.

And that’s just what they did. After some time, they had a full canister of tea leaves. It wasn’t until they wrote to Betty, asking her to cease from sending these time-consuming bags, that they found out they were tea bags and could be used just as they were to brew delicious pots of tea.

On another occasion, a family friend, having received packages of jello powder and flavour buds, used the powder but dropped the buds into a jar until she had amassed quite a collection. It wasn’t until the buds were discovered by a friend that the secret of the flavour being contained in the buds was uncovered.

On Sunday afternoons when Aunt Lizzie entertained visitors, the French family would often call. It wasn’t long before the Frenches invited Betty over for dinner, where she met the rest of the family: Isabel, Ronald, Stanley, and Norman, who took a special interest in Betty.

Eventually, Betty moved out of Aunt Lizzie’s house and rented a room on Westlake Avenue from a family named Burgess. There she soon discovered that Mrs. Burgess also came from Ligoniel—and, amazingly, she knew Betty’s entire family.

Betty began attending Cooke’s Presbyterian Church on Queen Street, where she was introduced to a number of other young people who had come from Ireland. She quickly struck up a friendship with Marie, the Burgesses’ daughter, who became a very special and lifelong friend.

Betty soon found herself surrounded by friends. And Norman French was one of them.

It was at church one Sunday, through hearing about God’s love for her, that her heart was stirred. She was reminded of her youthful days back at the Ardwick Gospel Hall in Manchester, where Mr. Philo, Mr. Prasher, and Mary Crabtree had taught her about Jesus. She fondly remembered the Reverend Jackson Buick from the Ligoniel Mission Hall in Belfast, who had preached with a booming voice, and his wife Daisy who had been his complement in every way, sweet and steady.

Betty had opened her heart to Jesus then, but her faith was young and soon forgotten. Now, years later, as Betty grew into an adventurous young woman, that same faith began to rise up in her. When the minister at Cooke’s extended the invitation to bow before God in full surrender, she couldn’t resist. She willingly knelt down and invited Jesus to be her Saviour and Lord.

It didn’t take long before Norman and Betty became quite enamoured with each other, and within three years, on September 29, 1956, they were married.

Serendipitously, two generations before this, another of Betty’s great aunts had married a cousin of Norman’s grandfather. This made Betty and Norman’s union the second time that a Heaney had married a French.

Norman became an insurance underwriter with the London Life Insurance Company in Toronto, and Betty stayed on at the Bell.

Chapter Three: A Turn in the Road

On a wintery December 1, 1957, Betty gave birth to Robert. It was a difficult delivery. Robert was in breech position with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.

Betty’s family doctor, while being a medical doctor, was not at the time a specialist. Dr. Bush desperately wanted to help