By Terrie Todd
At age 17, Jean Margaret McArthur was evacuated from London to the British countryside by the company she worked for. Jean’s love story began with a blind date. Though dubious, she agreed to go out with the Canadian soldier. She then agreed to a second date, and it was on that date that he proposed. Naturally, she thought he was crazy. He won her over, though, with the words, “As soon as I looked at you I said to myself, ‘Here’s the girl I’m going to marry.’”
And so she was. They got married on a 48-hour pass, but her new husband extended it an extra 24 hours. When he returned to his camp, his officer rewarded him with 21 days of KP (Kitchen Patrol), 21 days of CB (Confined to Barracks), and 21 days without pay. He figured it was worth it.
By 1945, Jean had moved to London to be closer to her family before leaving for Canada. With two young children by this time, the amount of paperwork was daunting. Jean wanted to wait until her husband was free to return home, but after a near miss with an incendiary bomb, he begged her to take the children to Canada. She left on March 31. 1945, crying with the conviction that she’d never see her parents again. She was 22 and her children were two and ten months old. Jean had a clear sense that she was burning her bridges and must make the most of it.
The RMS Franconia
Jean’s voyage on the troop ship Franconia
felt like a mixed blessing. She appreciated the abundance of food and the
kindness of the crew. But due to limited amounts of fresh water, she had to
drag two babies down to the ship’s hold for washing. She arrived in Halifax
feeling dirty and disheveled—not the way she wanted to meet her in-laws for the
first time. She described her overnight stay in a hostel there as worse than an
air raid. Her children refused to settle, and Jean spent the night cuddling
them and crying with them.
War brides and their children en route to Canada. Photo
taken in England, 17 April 1944. (photo by Lieut. W.J. Hynes, Canadian Department of
National Defence, courtesy Library and Archives Canada / PA-147114)
At the end of her train journey, her mother-in-law was there to meet them and Jean easily recognized her from a photograph. The man with her, however, left Jean baffled and more than a little disconcerted. She hadn’t seen her husband in eighteen months, and never in civilian clothing. This man looked like him, but not in an attractive way. Had her soldier somehow made it home? Her relief was palpable when she realized it was her brother-in-law. Her husband came home six months later—as handsome as ever to Jean.
Housing was scarce in the postwar years, but eventually Jean and her husband were able to purchase an old building and renovate it into a home in Fredericton, New Brunswick. There, they raised their children. Having been raised in London, Jean always felt sorry for her children because “all they had was a big backyard and all the woods to run in.”
Fredericton's City Hall
Sources:
Promise You’ll Take Care of My Daughter: The Remarkable War Brides of World War II, by Ben Wicks, Stoddart Publishing, Toronto 1993
Nina’s one task is to keep her family together while a world
war threatens to rip them apart.
Warned they “mustn’t cry,” British teenager Nina Gabriel and her two young siblings board a ship bound for Canada as part of the WWII child evacuee program in 1940. Nina’s mischievous brother and seasick sister test her limits on the long voyage—but her burden of responsibility grows still heavier in Canada.
Determined to fulfill her promise to her parents, Nina battles to keep the siblings together through what they all hoped would be no more than one school term. Months turn into years. Unfamiliar Canadian customs, a foster sister who resents them, the mysterious deaths of their host family’s other children, and the birth of a new brother back in England complicate Nina’s world. It doesn’t help when David, the boy she’s grown to love, enlists in the Air Force with no end to the war in sight.
When a telegram arrives after a London bombing, will Nina find a way to fulfill her promise for the brother she’s never met? Will the Gabriel siblings learn that each of them is loved, even if they cry?
Terrie Todd's novels are set mostly in Manitoba, Canada, were she lives with her husband, Jon, in Portage la Prairie. They have three adult children and five grandsons. Her next novel, Even If I Perish, releases in November 2025.
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