In the beginning...

Or... A very brief history of how the Canadian link was formed 

by Jill

For those of you who don’t know, in the beginning was my grandfather, William Hill, a young Canadian soldier serving in Europe in the First World War and stationed in Ashford, Kent, where he met my 18-year-old grandmother, Winifred Pryor. When they found that my father was expected, Will was given compassionate leave to marry Win. But her parents, my great grandparents, for some reason didn’t give their permission (at that time you couldn’t marry independently until you were 21) or persuaded them to wait, and the wedding didn’t take place. My father was born in 1919.

Will didn’t give up, even though he had to return to Canada with the army when the war ended. We know he wrote, arranged passage for my grandmother and father to join him, even sent money. We also know that my great grandmother was having none of it: Don’t really know why – maybe Win was just too useful to her demanding parents (she helped her father run his hairdressing business all her life and waited on her mother as a dutiful daughter was supposed to, caring for her into very old age); maybe they just fell in love with the baby and couldn’t bear to lose him and their daughter to Canada…

Whatever the reason, my great grandmother diverted those letters from Will to Win, told her to forget him, told him not to contact the family again. Win thought she’d been deserted and got on with her life as a single mother, living with her parents who helped her bring up my father.

She didn’t learn the truth until the 1940s when my mother, never one to appreciate secrets and lies, forced my great grandmother to tell her the history of my father’s birth. My great grandmother died in 1956.

My mother also got my grandmother, Win, to tell her all she remembered about Will. 

My grandmother died in 1992. She was as old as the century. After her death, my father began to wonder more about his Canadian father. My brothers and I decided to investigate properly. We unearthed all that had been learned about Will and the search began.

He had a brother, Dick, who had been blinded in the war. He had sisters. He probably came from Windsor, Ontario… we searched there but found little, even with my brother John visiting the city and researching the archives. Then we found Will’s and Dick’s Attestation papers online (the internet does change lives!) and our search shifted to London, Ontario.

We were getting nowhere, so John tried a long shot. We knew that our grandfather had run a baseball league while he was stationed in Ashford, presumably introducing the Canadian game to the people of this Kentish market and railway town (they weren’t convinced, there’s no Ashford baseball team now!).

John wrote to the London Free Press, to the sports editor, explaining that we knew our ‘long lost’ grandfather had been a baseball player and wondered if anyone in current sporting circles remembered him. Actually we didn’t say he was our grandfather, we just said we were searching from Will Hill.

The letter was published. I can still remember the amazing excitement I felt when we then heard from a Robert Hill, who said the Will Hill we were looking for was his late father. We’d found my father’s half brother. We just had to tell him that was who he was!

John had already decided to take my father to Canada to see the land of his father. They would have made the trip whether we’d found family or not. We’d also decided that I’d go too. Then it seemed a good idea for Mum and brother Nick to join in.

So the reply to unsuspecting Bob Hill revealed that he had a half brother, a sister in law, two nephews and a niece and they were all coming to London, Ontario in April.

Of course we were tactful. We said we would understand if he did not want to meet us. But we felt he should know we’d be around.

Phased? My Uncle Bob? Not a bit. I think we stayed for three weeks. No exaggeration to say that was a holiday of a lifetime for my father. He met his brother, his sister Diane, numerous nieces and nephews and great nieces and nephews. He visited his father’s grave where we scattered his mother’s ashes (yes, they came to Canada in my suitcase) in the River Thames, Canada version. Will and Win reunited at last.

Since then we’ve all stayed in touch. Aunt Diane came to England and France that very year, in the autumn. It was just so exciting getting to know her. It meant so much to my father. He feels really close to this new found sister. Bob and his quite amazing wife Marj, who organised a huge family party for us during that visit in 2005 and has proved to be a wonderful aunt ever since, visited England and France a year later.

Interestingly, Bob (who sadly died three years ago) was a genaeologist, and knew much about his father’s British family. So we visited Teignmouth and Dawlish during his visit, and the Exeter records office, and he was able to fill in some gaps in his family tree. He and I were even invited into and shown around the house my great great grandfather lived in.

And so here we are, in Canada. This time I’m meeting the cousins I didn’t get to see in 2005 (all except nurse Ronda who’s in Denver with her US police officer husband Michael): Robin in Red Lake and Cathy in Vancouver; Debbie in Edmonton made the trip to London to meet us in 2005. And this time I have Roger with me. And he’s rapidly finding out what a warm and welcoming Canadian family I have.