Jim McConnell's Autobiography 1877 - 1957Canadian pioneer farmer in Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia |
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26. We continued mostly in repairing and fixing all through the winter until the middle of February 1946. Then there was a general layoff, and I with many others found that our work in the shipyard was finished. Elmer had also been working in a Prince Rupert shipyard. When the war ended and the work slowed down, Elmer came south and settled in a house beside ours. It was Elmer who first suggested moving to the Okanagan Valley. He went there in March and looked it over, and he liked the nice bright climate so well that we all decided to sell out and move to the Okanagan where there were plenty of orchards and fruit. At first we settled at Winfield -- half way b etween Kelowna and Vernon, but this meant more travelling to work, especially for Elmer when he got working as a plumber in Kelowna. Gertrude had continued working in New Westminster in 1946, but in 1947, she came to the Okanagan and bought a house in Kelowna. We moved to Kelowna to live with her. This was certainly better than our highest hopes, for we had never expected to be living right in town and within walking distance of the big stores. At first, it seemed hard to adjust ourselves to this living in town, but the first year or two, I got on some construction jobs, and so the time passed quickly. Through all the years since our marriage in 1910, Willie Parker, Lou's brother had been our most faithful correspondent. From his letters, we always heard so much of the happenings in Peterboro and of our home town of Norwood, Ontario. Late in 1949, Willie complained of not feeling well and that he would have to undergo an operation. He had the operation and felt better for a short time, but his ailment proved to be cancer. In a few months, it returned, and he kept getting worse. Willie wrote to us in September saying that he was having more pain than usual, and this was his last letter to us. On September 30, 1950, we left by train for Peterboro and arrived there four days later. But Willie had passed on before our arrival. We went to their home and saw his wife, Margaret, and their boy, Allan. Two days later, we attended Willie's funeral service in the Uni ted Church and followed the funeral to Norwood where Willie was buried in the family plot. Thirty-two years had slipped away since our visit to Ontario in 1918. Time had made great chang es. Friends whom we knew as young working people were now stooped and old and grey. Those who were only children when we first knew them, were now married and had their families. We visited two weeks with my two sisters at Peterboro and Norwood, enjoying our visit except for the sadness of Willie Parker's passing. The first Sunday in Peterboro, a friend I had not met before called and took me out about seven miles to a farm home for our meeting. It was the first meeting with any of the Ontario friends in the truth, but I felt at home and not as a stranger, for God's people are of one spirit and of one mind the whole world over. After the meeting, I talked with Mrs. Leason and found to my surprise that she had nursed my Aunt Annie Thompson in her last days. Mr. Leason had travelled many miles to bring the workers to take her funeral. My Aunt Annie and Uncle Sam Thompson seem to have been my only relatives who really found and accepted God's way as their way of life so faithfully taught and manifested by Jesus and those faithful ones who followed Him. The next day was "Fair Day" in Norwood -- that great annual event which we had always attended in our younger days. At this fair, there is always a wonderful display of cattle, horses, livestock, poultry and pets. We met many of our old friends and old schoolmate of long ago; some were old and grey and stooped, some crippled and walking with canes. That week we also visited relatives and friends and called at both our old homes. I looked over those old hilly fields that we had left 44 years before. For it was really with a great desire to succeed in the world, that I had gone out West and to fill a place there, or as I had been taught, to
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