“If only your mother wouldn’t show it off before she cooks it!” This was my father’s weekly lament about the Sunday routine in my grandparents’ front room. My parents, my baby sister and I, aged five, dutifully assembled, ready to walk the city streets to church with my mother’s family. They lived two doors down in that leafy Toronto neighbourhood of the 50s. My Nana had just presented for inspection a generous joint of beef, latent with savoury, juicy promise. Momentarily, she would put it in that massive black-and-white oven. All was prepared for a proper lunch on our return: roast, Yorkshire pudding, carrots, parsnips, boiled potatoes and a sweet. The problem was, this gathering took place at 10:00 a.m. and we did not eat until 1:30 p.m. That cut of beef was about to be subjected to a heat that would have done justice to a 19th-century Presbyterian hellfire. Aberdonian tastes for meat reduced to its grey and stringy components and vegetables boiled beyond recognition had survived the 1905 emigration to Canada by my grandparents.
In my memory, the sun always streams through the stained glass “Jesus and the children” window and we always sing #1, The Holy Trinity. The childrens’ hymn that a hundred children proudly march to is always Jesus Bids Us Shine. The Sunday school teachers of those days are forever beaming and there are homemade goodies: the first time I tasted a chocolate chip cookie was at Sunday school, as close to an understanding of manna as a five-year-old could get!
There was a felt board with cloth figures of the apostles, olive trees and rowboats: if you hadn’t missed class lately, you might be picked to reverentially press on the piece representing Christ. The older children had graduated to a sand table with plaster figures of camels, sheep and Moses and, in my mind, a stream of real water — can that have been possible? As we left, church papers with games, puzzles, lists of possible pen pals from faraway places and suitable stories were pressed into our hands.
We rejoined our parents for the recessional. It is neither theologically sound nor politically correct, for me, a United Church minister, to confess, but my favourites remain those sturdy, utterly singable hymns. The Son of God Goes Forth to War, Onward Christian Soldiers and Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus. The church militant held far greater attraction than the difficult or soppy hymns for children: All Things Bright and Beautiful and God Sees the Little Sparrow Fall.
Afterwards, on the lawn, we mingled. The strict atmosphere of the sanctuary discouraged conviviality; it bubbled up in the narthex. First though, the weekly gauntlet: a small hand and a polite “thank you” were extended to the black-robed minister. He was a daunting figure, ancient to my child’s eye, probably 50 with a thick Scottish accent and always addressed as “Doctor.” A more formal time this: my grandmother, a formidable woman, was never “Margaret” to the ladies, but “Mrs. Allen.” Nearby, my more approachable grandfather was clapped on the back and hailed as “George” by his fellow elders. My parents were swallowed up by the crowd and we ran about as if released from bondage.
After walking home (we never “took the car out” on Sundays), we did not change, but played quietly indoors in our Sunday dresses and Mary Jane shoes. Puzzles and reading were sanctioned, playing cards banned. I recall pointing enviously at friends outside playing one bright Sunday. Nana joined me at the window and told me sternly, “Those children are United.”
Though the battles of union had been settled 30 years before, you would never have known it in that dining room. We were joined by fellow Scots, all Presbyterians who had resisted the blandishments of union. It remained a topic of conversation. My family were holdouts who subsequently left the very church building where my pals worshipped; we avoided it en route to our own church. There was lingering bitterness over a certain baptismal font left behind … it was built with granite imported from Aberdeen by my grandmother’s “people.”
Nana’s lack of interest in the domestic was not the most interesting thing about her. She was passionately intrigued by the issues of the day; devoted to the Red Cross and to “keeping the Sabbath” free from commercialism. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was her dearest cause; my grandparents were acquainted with Robert and Nellie McClung. The McClungs stayed with them on at least one of their jaunts east. There is a tale, perhaps apocryphal, that while the women were rallying the WCTU, my grandfather and Mr. McClung “would take a wee drop.” My family did not totally abstain. Though I never saw beer or wine in that home, good Scots whiskey was considered acceptable, virtually medicinal.
Looking back, one tends to add rose to those sepia-toned photographs. These selective observations of a darker nature are provided less
to explain away than to explore the dissonance between the words we sang: “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight,” and the world as a child experienced it. I recall my elegant grandmother sniffing at a woman in a fur coat that Nana considered seasonally unsuitable. “She must be Catholic.” Later, a neighbourhood friendship, sanctioned by my parents, was kept from my grandmother. She would not have approved of my knowing a Ukrainian girl.
One family disagreement breached the pews. My parents’ best friends, Harry and Eve Cohen were Jews; Eve a child refugee of the Holocaust. Seder suppers were shared at their house. They brought the best presents on Christmas Eve. My parents’ wish to name them guardians in their will was relayed to the family lawyer, a fellow church member. He refused to draw up the clause that might see us go to a Jewish home. My parents changed lawyers and never spoke to this man again.
This dark side of a warm and loving, shortbread-scented community was not informed by church-sanctioned orthodoxy. It was simply the temper of the times. Moving to a country on the other side of the globe, two World Wars and church union; too much change had been asked of my grandparents’ generation. They simply baulked at more. Ironically, both my aunt and uncle, companions of those Sunday walks, married into the Roman Catholic faith in the 60s. My grandparents lived to see their grandsons and loved them fiercely. Change was not elected, but an enforced condition and with Scots-Canadian forbearance, they sighed and ultimately smiled upon it.
