Finding My Family

By Belle Maynard Curd

The story of one woman's search for her father and grandparents and the surprising results. How was her mother able to keep the facts from her children for over forty years?

Set on the prairies, it is a true story but the mysteries surrounding it read like fiction. Her search took her to Minnesota, Saskatchewan, British Columbi

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Regency Publishers, International
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958517260

Belle Maynard Curd

Belle Maynard Curd, the author of FINDING MY FAMILY and NAVY DAYS, a seven book series of the Royal Canadian Navy including the numerous cartoons by William Ronald Hogg, Radar Rate 1946-1954, Dorothy's Story is a sequel to FINDING MY FAMILY. She attended the University of British Columbia and received her teaching certificate.Her loves in her life are her family, including 10 grandchildren, many great grand-children and yes, great, great grandchildren. Her aims are to keep on writing, learning and helping others.

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Finding My Family

Belle Maynard Curd

Copyright © 2022 Belle Maynard Curd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without a prior written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review, and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by the copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-958517-27-7 (Paperback Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-958517-28-4 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-958517-26-0 (E-book Edition)

Book Ordering Information

The Regency Publishers, International

7 Bell Yard London WO2A2JR

[e-mail]

www.theregencypublishers.international

[phone]

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Other Books Self Published By Belle

Introduction To Finding My Family 2nd. Edition

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

Epilogue

Knowledge Network Write-Up

Other Books Self Published By Belle

Charlie’s Shenanigans

Mother’s Real Estate Adventures

Aggie’s Letters

Navy Days series of seven books

Navy Days. 1946-1948 Joining Canada’s Royal Canadian Navy Book 1

Navy Days. 1948-1950 Serving two masters Book Two

Navy Days. 1952 European Cruise. Book Four

1956

Dorothy’s Story (in progress)

Book cover is painted by Belle Maynard Curd depicting the farm of Auntie Mel and Uncle Anderson, pioneers in Southern Saskatchewan about 1914 with sod house on the night which they built and lived in. Where the Saskatchewan River flows near Riverhurst

Introduction To Finding My Family 2nd. Edition

When writing the first edition of Finding My Family people would ask me What is the story about? I would have to go into a long explanation as to how my mother brought my sister, Dorothy and I up during the Great Depression of the 30’s back on the prairies without any knowledge of aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins or other family members. A deep mystery shrouded our beginnings especially who our father was and what happened to him. We didn’t even suspect the truth our mother was hiding from us but we were always curious. Instead of answers to our many questions she would tell us Children are supposed to be seen and not heard. or The past is dead and gone. Better to leave it that way.

Forty years went by without any meaningful information coming forward in spite of the fact that I strove to pry information from my mother, wrote letters, and sought genealogical libraries. I was hampered by lack of statistics and knowledge as to where to look. My mother had told us her parent’s name was Smith and that they had come from Minnesota and her sister’s name was Minnie. Well I was soon to find out that half the world is named Smith and I was foiled time and time again.

When the truth finally flowed from her lips accidently during a conversation with my husband, Charlie, my whole life was changed. Many friends and relatives were as excited as I was over the discovery and I had to retell the story over and over again. They were amazed! One friend had an acquaintance who said she would like to write a book about it. Others thought it would make a great movie. I thought that if a complete stranger could write a book about what had happened, knowing only half the information, perhaps I could write a book myself. I was going to call it Mabel, Mabel, Mabel but I found myself answering when asked what the story was about, It’s about finding my family and so the title was born.

However, it is much more than a story about one woman’s search for her family. Just like the story of Huckleberry Finn is more than a tale of a trip down the Mississippi, this true-life story is a social portrayal of life in the thirties as affecting all that lived through that era. The underlying story is as important as the one on the surface. Many people have written to tell me how tears of joy and sorrow welled into their eyes as they read this account and how it brought back memories of their own childhood although they sometimes had entirely different backgrounds.

It is a book for everyone. It is simply written so that young people reading this book learn that modern day family problems are not so modern after all. Family life and marital breakups cause hardships for children and this story helps them realize that when put in this kind of situation they are not alone, and yet it is enjoyed by adults on an entirely different level.

Encouraged by many who think this book will become a piece of treasured Canadiana and by others who want a chance to read it, I have decided to reprint it. My first edition was somewhat less than professional. However, those that read it loved it and I think you will find this second edition more polished and even more enjoyable to read.

1

When thou must home . . . and there arrived,

a new admired guest,

The beauteous spirits do ingirt thee round

… blithe Helen, and the rest

To hear the stories of thy finisht love

From that smooth tongue whose music hell

can move.

Thomas Comton d.l620

Now I’ve told a thousand people perhaps, how hot it gets in Sasktachewan; how cold it gets in Saskatchewan; how windy it gets in Saskatchewan; how dry it gets in Saskatchewan but I’ve never told anyone until now, how wet it gets in Saskatchewan. You will call me a downright liar if I told you I didn’t recall it raining between 1929 when I was born and 1939 when the war started, but I could probably get a few people to vouch fo r me.

Rain was so rare in Saskatchewan in those days that when it finally did come in the late spring of 1939, no one was ready for it. Children weren’t sure what it was. Little ones ran to the their mother’s skirts. When they finally realized it wouldn’t hurt them, they ran into the streets which were momentarily like lakes; put their mouths up to the sky to catch the huge succulent drops, and splashed gleefully around in the water.

You see rain in Saskatchewan is not ordinary rain. It’s not like the rain they have in September in Vancouver where it can sort of drizzle from Labour Day to the 24th of May. Saskatchewan has only extraordinary rain. For one thing you know a day or two in advance that it’s coming and you don’t need a weatherman to tell you either. Arthritics can do a day or two better than that. Visitors can be fooled for they often think when they see mountain upon mountain of white billowy clouds that it is going to rain. Not the native ‘prairie chicken’ however. He knows that more than likely those clouds will blow away no matter how badly he needs that moisture for his wheat crop. What he watches for is a burning hot day that reaches into the night. There needn’t be a cloud in the sky, but he feels it’s likely going to rain. He looks for the lightning in the distance bolting into the ground like witches’ fingers. Then when he hears that thunder, and only then, will he say, We’re in for it by morning.

If it’s mid-day rain the sky will get black as pitch. The wind which hasn’t moved all day begins to get nasty. The dust blows around the corner in swirls. Everyone hurries for home. The lightning is now near at hand and only with its arrival are you reminded that it is indeed daytime. Children cry, old maids crawl under the bed. With a huge roar the rain comes down in drops large enough to drench a person in a matter of moments. No one owns an umbrella but they all wished they did at that moment.

Being such a flat land the sewers cannot take the water and soon everything is flooded including cellars, streets and subways. It may be over in a few minutes, after which the sun may come out as if it had never happened. Only the sticky black mud is left to remind you. At best, it isn’t likely to last more than a few hours.

It was just such a rain that greeted us when we arrived in Regina that September night. We had been watching it build ever since we left Moose Jaw. Instead of being a warm rain as the summer rains often are, it was cold and miserable. A few degrees colder and it would have turned to snow. A month later and it surely would have been snow. Of course I knew it would be over by morning but that was no consolation at the time. The girls wanted to look their best for their mother so we rented a motel room first. Clarence and Madeleine would stay there for our sojourn in Regina, but the rest of us were hoping to stay at Mom’s after the shock wore off.

They all decided that Madeleine and I should go over and get Dot and bring her to the motel. If Mom just happened to be over there she wouldn’t know who she was anyway and she knew I was coming with people I knew.

When we got there, Dot was at the ‘Y’ swimming with one of the girls. Larry was at home baby sitting so I introduced Madeleine as Mrs. Ray. My brother-in-law was quite surprised to see me so soon again. I explained that I had had a chance to come back so I took it.

The children were quite taken with Madeleine and one of them asked right out of the blue if she were their aunt. Well, we just about flipped! She looked at me and I looked at her. Then finally I sputtered out. Whatever makes you think that? I thought that somehow the news had got out. The little one turned to me and said, Oh, I just wondered. We didn’t like to stay and wait too long so finally we gave Larry the telephone number of the motel and left. Once we were all assembled we decided to take the bull by the horns and phone Mom and tell her we were coming over. It was getting late and she might be in bed if we waited any longer. I told her on the phone I had people with me that I came with and was it all right if I brought them along too. She said, I guess so so off we went.

The girls were almost nervous wrecks by now. I didn’t know what they were thinking but I knew they had this inward dread that their mother would reject them again. Up the steps we went single file with Aggie right behind me followed by Clarence, Helen and Madeleine. Hi Mom! I made it!

Hi dear! Come on in. I was just going to make a cup of coffee for all of you; or are they like you and only drink Postum?

By that time Aggie was up the stairs. She went right to her mother and put her arms around her and said, Hello Mother. I’m Agnes.

Then Clarence came in Hello Mother. I’m Clarence. I thought Mom was going to break down right then and there. She came over to me and started to cry. I told her not to cry; to be happy! Surprisingly enough she collected herself right away. And this is Helen and this is Clarence’s wife, Madeleine.

Mom was visibly shaken but invited us all to sit down. Then she asked me, Belle, what have you been doing?

I gazed across the room at my Mother; this frail little person, now shrunken to 105 pounds; this woman who had brought me up to always be honest and yet here she was … a stranger. I wouldn’t hurt her for all the world and yet, at that moment I guess I was hurting her to her very bowels by bringing forth these living testimonies of her past that she had so carefully buried all these years.

I don’t know exactly what I gave in way of an answer to her question. I never was good at conversing with her. I suppose I uttered a few words about finding the family but my thoughts were way back when things were such a contradiction to what I was perceiving before me.

2

do you know who made you?

Nobody as I knows on, said (Topsy) with a

short laugh, I ‘spect I just grow’d.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

To me she was always ‘Mommie’ or, as I got older, ‘Mom’. Most others called her Mrs. Maynard. Very few called her ‘Belle’. She signed her name as ‘Belle Maynard’. Only the rare person called her M abel.

Mabel, Mabel, Mabel, the mother I never really knew. Yes, some people called her that but so few I couldn’t tell you which ones until her well-kept secret was out.

As far as I ever knew there were only three of us … Mom, Dorothy, my younger sister by two-and-one-half years, and me. We had no father, no aunts, no cousins, no grandparents, no brothers or sisters except for each other of course.

It was unusual in those days to be left alone with no family but we seldom gave it much thought What was, was. Oh yes, we did ask Mom about Grandma and Grandpa Smith who lived far away, and over the years we did learn a little although the subject was really a thoroughly touchy one. We even learned we had an aunt somewhere.

Mom was not meant to live alone. She certainly wasn’t trained to earn a living for herself. Her education consisted of about eight years of schooling which may have been about average for the times but women were expected to get married and raise kids, not work for a living. The opportunities open for women were very limited.

Secondly, she was born a lady. Her parents were quite well to- do back in Minnesota and ran a large dairy farm. In Ada, Wisconsin, her father had race horses. Her mother must have brought her up with grace and protocol. I remember once she said her mother had told her, Never learn to milk a cow and you’ll never have to. She definitely was not trained for the rigors of prairie life!

Thirdly, she had Dorothy and I to hold her back and often told us so.

Perhaps lastly, of all the places to be in the world during the hungry thirties there we were in the middle of the Palliser Triangle, right on the bald prairies, the hardest hit of any place during the Great Depression.

We lived upstairs in one room of a little frame house on the 20 block Smith Street in the capitol city of Regina. Downstairs the landlady gave piano lessons. Next door was an even smaller house with a huge barn behind it which was converted into a second-hand store.

I used to wheel my little wicker doll carriage up and down the sidewalk and sometimes childhood curiosity would get the better of me and I would enter into the barn’s lofty precinct. There in the cool darkness (as compared to the heat of the pavement outdoors) I would gaze with wonder at the old coal-oil stoves, the Winnipeg couches, the ice boxes, the brass beds, the coal-and-wood ranges, the wicker lawn chairs, the rolls of linoleum with the patterns almost all worn off, the lanterns hanging from the ceiling along with halters for the horses, oak chairs, thick rope like hangman’s nooses, copper boilers, cracked crocks and much, much more. Every corner was crammed with yesterday’s momentos with only a narrow path through to the back. I don’t suppose Mom knew her preschooler went there.

Another place Dorothy and I went that Mom wouldn’t have approved of had she known the whole truth was over to Victoria Park. It was only a block away across Lome Street and it had a strange fascination for us. It wasn’t the park itself but the sandpile over there. It wasn’t even a sandpile in the true sense of the word but merely a pile of sand against a board fence that Mr. Bell, who looked after the park, used on the icy sidewalks through the park in the wintertime. In the golden warm days of spring it was a delightful place to play and we would stay there for hours. One sunny afternoon a little friend and I were busy playing in the sandpile when we saw Dorothy coming over to join us. We decided to hide. I’m sure it must have been my friend’s idea as although I was a great follower, I was a poor leader and feared my mother’s wrath. Dorothy never did find us and I guess after a while we came out of hiding and started playing again. Well imagine Mother’s consternation when I arrived home later that afternoon without my little sister.

After frantic searching she was finally found at the police station, crying and unhappy. The policeman said she had wandered way over to Scarth Street on the other side of the park. He said she had even refused the fresh orange he had offered, a precious thing in those days.

That incident ended our trips over there. Maybe it was just as well as Mother never would have approved if she had known about Mr. Bell, the gardener, at the park. There are some things even the smallest children do not tell their mothers and I had never told Mother that Mr. Bell was not a very nice man. He used to try to get me into his garden shack to fondle me. I can still remember his sandy hands as he placed me up on a chair he had there and played with my private parts. Years later when I went through that park he still worked there and I went out of my way to avoid him although I never told my mother.

We never stayed long in one place anyway, as Mom was always moving us around and my next recollections were of the two rooms where we lived on