Kenny the Communist

Kenny became a communist during the harsh winter of 1934. It was to be his secret for the next 60 years, and a decision based solely on the desire for hot cocoa and warm cookies.     

Oscar and Olga

In 1934, Kenny was a 7 year old growing up in the midst of the Great Depression. He lived in Prince George, a rough and tumble lumber town in northern British Columbia. Kenny was Oscar and Olga’s youngest child, 9 years younger than his closest sibling. His oldest sibling, Orville, was his hero. Kenny was known as ‘Whitey’ because of his platinum blond hair. He was a skinny freckled kid always ready for an adventure. Back then the summer seemed to last forever. Kenny and his friends would think nothing of jumping off the train trestle into the mighty Fraser River. They fished, swam, collected bottles and told stories.

“I boney-eyes the core”, they’d shout, the second someone dug out an apple to munch on. Whoever said those magic words first had the privilege of sucking on the apple core after the owner was done with it. They spent a lot of time watching trains leave the train yard. Once a train had cleared the yard, desperate men would often leap from the ditches carrying the remains of their lives tied in small bundles. They’d run along the track till they could get enough of a grip to attach themselves to the sides of the moving cars.  They were ‘riding the rods’, going from town to town looking for work.

Orville and Kenny

“Your father’s a scab!” they yelled at him in the schoolyard.

“Your fathers are all Bolsheviks!” he’d yell back, one toe dug into the dirt to give him better traction when he started running.

Oscar and Olga were Norwegian immigrants. Oscar had worked for the CN Railway before times got tough and he’d been laid off. He refused to live on food stamps and government relief though, and was lucky enough to get a job on a highway extension relief project begun in 1931. Work camps had been established along the route and Olga worked as a cook in one of the camps. Kenny was too young to stay home so she brought him along and he helped where he could. Oscar was away from home for weeks at a time. He brought home stories from the road crew, how grown men went mad in the spring after the mosquitoes and black flies had hatched in the bogs and swarmed them. Oscar didn’t mind the work; it was better than being called a communist like the men at home who collected assistance from the government of the day. Among the jobless, a social and political movement, led by communists, had been growing in Prince George. In the 1930s Canadian communists were very active on behalf of working-class people and had been co-ordinating agitation activities across the country.

The winter of 1934 had been particularly hard and there was no money for extras. In the town’s center, known as the ‘red light district’, lived a Russian woman, Mrs Korshanenko, a well known communist. Like his friends, Kenny had been warned to steer clear of that part of town. One winter day Kenny was told that Mrs Korshanenko was giving away free cookies and hot cocoa. A plan was hatched with a couple friends to find her house. The next evening they knocked tentatively at the door. It was answered by Mrs Korshanenko who warmly invited them in. She handed them pamphlets of information and spoke about the opportunities they could anticipate as members of the communist party youth wing. She offered them the cookies and cocoa, but only after they signed their names on the small cards she handed them. Kenny, his mouth watering just thinking about the cocoa and cookies, signed without another thought. They attended as many meetings as they could that winter. They weren’t interested in what was being said, they were only interested in their reward of cocoa and cookies.

When my father told me this story in the early 90s’ he had actually kept it a secret for some 60 years. Because he’d spent his entire adult life in the Canadian military, he had been hesitant to admit this ‘indiscretion’. He wondered what would have happened to him if his superiors had ever found out he’d been a communist.

Mom Memories

It’s coming up to the 2^nd anniversary of my mother’s death. It’s taken me this long to allow myself the luxury of thinking about her. Before now, anytime she moved into my thoughts, I quickly pushed her away. It was still too hard to think about her.

Grace and Rose

Last week I took dad to see mom’s only remaining sibling, her sister Grace, who lives in a nursing home not far from where dad lives.  My mom Rose and Grace were the closest in age and were the best of friends. When they had the opportunity to get together at Thanksgiving or Christmas, they shape shifted. They were no longer 80 and 82, but 10 and 12. They always snuck upstairs at some point in the evening, and closed themselves in a room. There they’d whisper together,  and examine the contents of several bags each of them had been saving for the other. Several of us downstairs would get called up to try on something that was 3 sizes too big or small, or hadn’t been ‘in style’ in 10 years. No matter, Grace had been a seamstress for 60 years. Nothing was wasted. When Jerry’s long sleeved shirts wore out at the elbow, Grace would cut the sleeves off and make the shirt into a short sleeve shirt. She’d even take the buttons she’d removed from the sleeve and sew them on as decoration around the now ‘too wide’ sleeve hole. They were a riot. Mom could make Grace laugh until she cried. They told many stories of their youth. One of my favourites had to do with an old pair of boots. I can remember the boots sitting on top of a home-made pine closet in Grace’s tiny bungalow, just east of Ottawa. They were rotted black rubber boots cut off long ago just above the ankle. They hadn’t been worn in over 70 years, but for a pair of ageing sisters, all you had to do was mention those boots to stir up laughter and memories of a time long ago.

Front - Rose and Grace (1936?)

Rose was born in 1924, the twelfth out of what was to be a family of thirteen children, on a farm east of Ottawa. Her mother died shortly after giving birth to her younger sister Grace a couple years later. After their mother’s death they were cared for by older siblings. The family was extremely poor but resourceful and hardworking. Rose was a rebellious tomboy known for beating up on the boys at school, especially if they teased her or her sisters. There was only one pair of black rubber boots to be shared by the three youngest girls. Each morning a fight ensued before the three mile hike to school, to determine who would wear the boots. Rose usually won. Often she would attempt to hide the boots the night before. At dinner one night the smell of rubber slowly permeated the kitchen air. Rose had hidden the boots behind the wood stove. Fortunately, she was able to save them by dousing them in cold water but they had to be severely cut down. 

One Sunday morning when Rose was seven and Grace five, they were left alone at the farm to do chores while the rest of the family attended church. Rose was cleaning out the wood stove and had given Grace a bucket of ashes to discard behind the house. Instead, Grace threw them behind the chicken shed. The resulting fire destroyed both farmhouse and barn. Clouds of black billowing smoke could be seen for miles but nothing could be done. Rose and Grace sat weeping at the end of the lane, terrified of the punishment their strict father would deal them. Luckily, Rose was wearing the black rubber boots.

After the fire, the family was split up and sent to different farms to live with relatives. Rose and Grace lived and worked on their uncle’s farm. Often they’d hear the train whistle blow in the distance, stop their field work and run the half mile to the track to wave to the engineer on his way to Ottawa. Each time he passed he would blow a special whistle just for them. Rose wanted nothing more than to take that train. Ottawa was only thirty miles away, but it may as well have been on the other side of the planet. 

When Rose was sixteen she took that train into Ottawa and left Grace in possession of the old black boots. Grace never got rid of them.