Anna's Story

By Elizabeth Carlson

Anna turned 21 years old on the day that she arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia. She felt twice that age. The mirror on the train reflected dark circles beneath her brown eyes and a thin face. Her overall appearance was only saved by her glowing, abundant hair.

A Jewish girl, she was emigrating from Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband and baby daughter. Her father, on her departure, had said: “You’ll live to regret this decision. You were always the one to chase wild dreams, wanting more than you had.”

“Isn’t a dream better than this?” she had asked, sweeping her arms to take in their surroundings.

It was 1922 and Canada was in the midst of Great Depression. When Anna was called upon to honor a commitment to a Jewish friend caught in pre-war Europe, she needed to balance a career that she had worked hard to establish so she could foster a nine-year-old child. Her dreams took a direction that she had never expected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649791467

Book preview

About The Author

Elizabeth Carlson currently resides in Abbotsford, British Columbia, and has lived her entire life in Canada. She has traveled extensively throughout North America, the Caribbean, and Europe.

Her background in journalism includes all aspects of newspaper writing that involved working relationships with West Kootenay newspapers over twenty years. In addition, she served two consecutive terms as Seniors’ Advisory Representative for the West Kootenays. She holds a Fine Arts diploma in Creative Writing from David Thompson University/Selkirk College as well as several certificates from special interest groups. Freelance articles and short stories have appeared in general interest publications and specific to seniors.

Dedication

To Anna for her original inspiration.

Copyright Information ©

Elizabeth Carlson 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Carlson, Elizabeth

Anna’s Story

ISBN 9781649791450 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781649791467 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021918385

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2021

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

Acknowledgment to my three daughters (Janice, Jill, and Jo-Anne) who always encouraged me to be creative in my writing and in other activities. For this book, I would also like to thank Janice who has assisted with editing and publishing assistance.

Background for Anna’s Story by Elizabeth Carlson

Anna’s story is part fact and part fiction.

While working as a volunteer, Anna, a Jewish woman, gave me the material to write her story.

Against her father’s wishes, after World War I, she married Bob Ford, a Gentile. The following year, the couple, with their baby, emigrated to Vancouver, BC, Canada. They suffered much hardship through the depression, but Anna persevered and, using her dressmaking skills and talent to create hats, found work that led to a successful career in retail sales.

Bob Ford never fully recovered from a war wound. He died early in their marriage, which had started to fail. After his death, to supplement her income, Anna took in boarders and scrimped to provide for her child during Canada’s depression. She continued to work in her profession.

To make Anna’s Story more interesting, I added a fiction component, Magna, the daughter of Jewish parents who Anna knew in Glasgow. The family, who’d moved to Germany well before the war, were caught in the Nazi uprising against Jews.

Ruth, Magna’s mother, begs Anna to give Magna a safe home. Reluctantly, Anna agrees, and Magna arrives under the care of Marc, a man with a mysterious past.

My acquaintance was agreeable to adding a fiction component to make her story more interesting. And realistically, at this time, children were leaving Europe to safer homes.

In the ‘new’ story, a relationship between Anna and Marc slowly develops over the start of World War II, Vancouver, BC, and finally to Miami, Florida.

The ‘real’ Anna holidayed in Miami, where she met her future husband. The couple lived in an apartment hotel in Miami, traveling on the Queen Mary many times across the Atlantic to places where her husband had business ventures, similar to those of the fictional Marc. When Anna’s husband of twenty-five years passed away, she returned to Canada to resume her dressmaking career, which included millinery.

Anna was close to ninety when she died, and her daughter, an only child from the first marriage, died soon after. There was no family from the second marriage.

Because I am not Jewish, I have relied on Anna’s notes on Judaism in the first part of the story.

Part I

It was 1930 when Anna received the letter from Germany that had been forwarded three times, her address almost illegible. In a close script, her Glasgow friend, Ruth wrote:

At first, I felt strange in a foreign country, but George’s family accepted me and are kind. My Yiddish background helped me learn German quickly. George is not practicing like his father but in research. If it weren’t for the whispers against Jews, I’d be happy. I worry something more will come of this attitude. George says I am safe married to him, but I still worry.

Anna pressed the wrinkled paper and read on:

I feel so alone at times. I never hear from my family in Glasgow. We have three beautiful children, Christopher, Thomas, and four-year-old Magda. My little darling keeps me company while the boys are at school. I am not able to work.

The letter ended abruptly with Ruth’s signature. It was as if someone or something interrupted her. Knowing now there was no guarantee for a rosy future, Anna set the letter aside. They’d both had endless dreams and ambitions.

Anna glanced at the creased letter. She pictured a girl she’d shared a working lunch with and the occasional evening at the pictures. And that Ruth was crazy in love with her German suitor, who was compelled to leave Scotland following the World War.

Sitting at her desk, the view of the mountains from her window, Anna remembered what Canada had meant to her as a new arrival. The stock market crashed in 1929, and Ramsay MacDonald’s Labor Victory embraced Britain. Hitler’s national triumphs in Germany were headlines in all Canadian newspapers. But in those first years, Bob and Anna’s world centered around two square blocks in Vancouver’s west end. They had moved into the little flat after a short stay with her sister Jeanne and husband, Bernie.

Her father, Louis, had been against her marrying Bob, who had a medical discharge from the army shortly after the end of World War I. After marrying, the couple followed Jeanne and her husband to Canada to find the Canadian dream.

When she told her papa she was breaking the apprenticeship contract with the tailor in Glasgow, he said, Mark my words, you’re making a big mistake. I went to a lot of effort getting you taken on. And sooner or later, Bob will get a job, even with his shattered leg. Louis’s feelings toward Bob were never strong.

Anna never argued with her papa, who always had the last word. When she said she wanted to marry Bob, a Gentile, Louis agreed, but only if Bob converted to Judaism. You’ve disappointed me, Anna. I always pictured you married to a nice Jewish boy, he said. But you have my permission if he agrees to convert.

I doubt he’ll do that, Papa, she said.

He will if he wants you.

We could elope, or you give up your faith, Bob said when she told him. They were walking in the park as they did most evenings.

I’ll never do that and be an outcast. We’ll have to say goodbye forever. She wiped away a tear and turned her head.

Why should I be the one to compromise? he argued, but the next day he came by the flat with many questions. The religion confuses me; I’m baffled by all these special days.

She’d buried her face in shame. There’ll be no wedding without. A tear slid down her cheek.

When she met her father the next night, she screamed at him. I’ll never see Bob again, and it’s your fault.

He’ll come around, he said. And he was right.

Bob agreed to do whatever was necessary. The circumcision was performed by a mohel, a person trained in the procedure with a doctor present. Eight months later, Anna and Bob were married in the traditional Jewish way. As always, Papa had got his way.

They’d arrived in Vancouver after a long ship’s journey and cross-country train ride. Anna had been sick most of the days on the ship, leaving Janie’s care to Bob.

She tidied up in the train’s small compartment before arriving. Always petite and slender, she now verged on being downright skinny. Her attractive dark hair, once shiny and long, was now lank and colorless. She hardly looked like a young woman celebrating her 21st birthday. She felt and looked like a survivor from a refugee camp.

I see I have to fatten you up, her sister said after giving her a hug. Jeanne was already plump with her second child.

On the way to the little house on 4th Avenue, Jeanne stopped at a bakery to pick up Anna’s birthday cake. She pointed to a stoop at the entrance. Hop up, and look north through the trees. The mountains are fabulous. That’s why you’ve come. Her face broke into a wide smile.

Crowded into a basement space that Bernie and Jeanne