If you are one of the few people who haven’t already heard the story and/or you want to know how we came to be married less than a year after Jane & Monty’s wedding here it is
while the borders are still closed and you are maybe desperate for something to do ...
It’s long, it’s crazy, it’s maybe hard to follow and it’s probably really boring
June 1973 I was in London with Kay when we met Jane Lafontaine (Brigham) on a bus trip to Westminster Cathedral. She was alone in London so of course we invited her to sleep on the floor of our one-bedroom bedsitter for a few days. Lots of “what do you call this (slip vs. petticoat etc. etc.) and lots of laughs watching Jane put the largest rollers we had ever seen into her hair every night. Jane left and Kay and I went on our Contiki Europe trip and afterwards for some pathetic reason I decided to go back home while Kay stayed on. I returned to London the next June, with June, to share a flat (um a large bedroom + kitchen) with Kay and Kris (Contiki). Both June and I worked at Harrod’s for their summer sale, then she left on her Contiki trip and I stayed on, now promoted from a “spare” to “Miss Ingham” on the reception desk in the HR department. I received an invite to Jane and Monty’s wedding in October and figured I could just afford the cheap fare.
That cheap ticket turned out to be purchased from a travel company that was owned by a company that was owned by a travel company that went bankrupt - I think every travel company in the UK & Europe went bankrupt that summer of 1974. My pathetic wage from Harrods covered rent and food with a bit left over if you were lucky so I had to find a better-paying job. Kay (excellent data-entry operator) was working at a Data Entry company that hired Aussies and Kiwis because they would work their butts off (unlike the English girls), in order to have $$s to travel. They would work, save, travel, come back, work, and “repeat, repeat, repeat”. My first job (at 15) was a data entry operator, so off I (possibly the world’s worst data entry operator ) went to work with Kay. Occasionally the owner would come in and tell us what our names would be for that day because the taxation officer was coming to visit! Regardless of who I was, or how much data I actually entered, I did make enough to buy another ticket.
So I flew to Ottawa on Tuesday October 1st 1974- I think Canada was playing Russia in hockey because after the Air Canada pilot made an announcement everybody was was pretty happy! I stayed with Jane’s parent’s and there was about 25 snowflakes that night - and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The wedding was on Saturday - rehearsal party the night before! I had never heard of a rehearsal party let alone been to one (they weren’t a thing down in Port Adelaide). I only had one dress ( I bought it from Harrods because I had staff discount)!! So that worked for the rehearsal dinner (even though everybody else was in long dresses) and Jane loaned me a long dress for the wedding.
Joseph was an usher (I had never heard of an usher for a wedding!) and I guess he didn’t know much about rehearsal dinners either because he arrived wearing a red and white checked synthetic shirt with brown corduroy pants!!! The next day, in his French-navy blue suit with bow tie and matching cumber-band, YEP! that’s when I fell for him. It took three more months before he asked me out and our date was bowling (I had never heard of FIVE-PIN bowling!!) And we were together pretty-much everyday from then until I left January 7th. I had to leave because “they” wouldn’t let me stay past my 3-month visitor visa. It was pretty ugly at the airport - I didn’t want to go!
I left heaving and sobbing the whole trip back to London, spent the night with Trish (Kiwi data-entry friend), who had schlepped across London to pickup my extra luggage from Kris. (Unless you’ve ever shlepped any amount of luggage on any bus or tube, anywhere in London you have no idea!). I flew back home, back to another data entry job, and after huge telephone bills, back to Canada April 1st 1975.
I should mention that when I left for London in 1973 I didn’t have a lot any money and each time I flew back and forward I had less and less. For this trip back to Canada, to Joseph, I had only enough for a one-way ticket. Joseph had heard horror stories of people arriving at Customs & Immigration with only a one-way ticket and being sent back. Turns out Joseph didn’t have any money either (obviously the expensive dinner back in December was just to impress me) so he took out a loan (co-signed by his collegue, now life-friend Alexander Bridge) and bought me a return ticket. I should also mention that as well as having less and less money, I was also becoming more and more terrified of flying. So for this trip my Mother did what any Mother would do - she gave me some Valium pills - and off I flew in my long-flowing (comfy) dress to hopefully sleep through the five flights and wake up in Ottawa on April 2nd.
The craziness of what happened between landing in San Francisco and finally landing in Ottawa the next day is a novel in itself and hard to condense. It involved day light saving in S.F. that wasn’t in Vancouver, it involved AC accidentally removing the return portion of my ticket and continuous announcements about said ticket portion, it involved me not having slept off the pills, it involved me desperately trying to explain to Canadian Customs and Immigration why I was back so soon (2.5 months). It involved so many things!! I guess my hippy-looking dress and my Valium-induced glassy eyes didn’t help and Immigration left me sitting while the announcements continue and I thought I would miss my flight to Ottawa (no daylight savings = 1 hr difference !!) and so I started to cry - a lot … and it turned into heaving sobs, so loud that a female agent took pity on me and after I heaved and sobbed and cried and cried and promised with my life that I wouldn’t work, gave me a three-month Visitor Visa. I made the overnight flight to Ottawa (via Toronto) and finally there was Joseph to meet me at the airport, in his red and white checked synthetic shirt and brown corduroys.
I don’t even know if I knew that Joseph was a bird watcher at this point in time, but that first day he took me for a drive out the back of Kanata, along Richardson Side Rd. Did we see a bird ?- all I remember is that I wanted a milkshake. So there was the start of the rest of our lives together; a bird-watching car ride and the never-ending search for the perfect milkshake.
I’m living with Joseph because I have (absolutely) no money, no job, no friends (other than Jane), no family, no warm clothes (it snowed April 2nd) and no more Valium. Calling Australia was ridiculous!. I had an international driver’s licence that counted for nought as far as driving on the other side of the road went and so there I sat everyday waiting for the minute Joseph arrived home. What a sad sack, what pressure on him and how horrible for Ken, who shared the house with us! … still I had my return ticket.
At some point I figured I should try and get a job, so I popped off to the Immigration office for a Work Permit, so I could get a job as a data entry operator . I waited there in the waiting room (all day?) while people from every country in the world went in and came out with a permit, until finally the person called me in to tell me that Canada didn’t need any data entry operators. I was pretty sure that Immigration lady in Vancouver must have sent out an alert across Canada to make sure I didn’t work and I asked the man if my name was on a blacklist and he said no. More heaving and sobbing on the bus ride home to poor Joseph.
In June, Joseph and Monty were leading a birding trip to Alaska and would be away all of June. My Visitor Visa ran out at the end of June and they wouldn’t let me work so the only way I could stay was … to get married! I called Immigration and they said yes they would send my application to Chicago to apply out-of-the country, and would give me a three-month extension to have the wedding. So one night over the dishes I mentioned this to Jospeh and he said OK , we could get married. A couple of nights later I said I didn’t want him to feel he had to marry me so I said I would go home and he said OK. The next week, after seeing Shampoo (!!??) He said it was OK he really did want to marry me and I guess by then I really did as well so I said OK and started the paperwork that extended my visa until Sept 30th.
We went camping in Algonquin park with Ken & Eileen and Greg & Florrie, that May long weekend and that’s when Joseph and I “agreed” on a date for the wedding. I said we shouldn’t wait until the last month or it would look suspicious, so that made it August and he said OK, and I wanted it on a Friday and he said OK and I said “what about the first Friday in August?” and he said OK!! So we have a date; August 1st. 1975! My poor parents had never seen, talked or even met Joseph - such was their trust in me, that I would choose “a nice person”!! Joseph’s parents hadn’t met me either!
I drove Joseph to the airport for his trip to Alaska and now not only did I not have any job, any money, any family, any friends (other than poor Jane) - now I didn’t even have (poor) Joseph! There were a million ridiculously expensive ($600) phone calls in the middle of the night - they were watching birds during the day - and still I was miserable. It was my birthday on the 17th and I received lots of phone calls from Australia! Even the Bell Canada Operator asked if it was my birthday given all of the calls (you had to be connected by an operator way back then). During Mum’s phone call she asked if it would be possible to bring the wedding forward by two weeks because there was a tour she could take and she could substitute Buffalo NY for Ottawa - IF - we could move the wedding to July 25th. ?? (Taking a tour with her friend Marie (my Dad wouldn’t fly), to see lots of other places in NA would justify the expense.) Well that wouldn’t be a problem I said!!
I was pretty happy and was pretty sure Joseph would be as well when I met him at the airport to tell him that he was getting married in three weeks. Only problem was that now we had to do all of the things we had told Mum we were doing … marry in a church, have a wedding dress, have a small reception etc. etc. Joseph already had a suit and Mum sent over $$s towards the reception and for him to buy a pair of black shoes because his were the only tan shoes in Jane’s wedding party. All that done and Wednesday July 23rd. we were back at the airport with Joseph wondering which of the two women crossing the tarmac was my Mum; the big tall one or the little short one? (Marie is very short!) A “rehearsal” at the church the next day and an invite from Joseph’s parents for lunch on Friday so they could meet my Mother (and me!) And then it was Friday, July 25th 1975.
The wedding day is another long ridiculous story; market at 7.00 a.m. for church flowers mum insisted we have, Eileen and Marie making devilled eggs (what else did we have to eat??), lunch at the Dafoe’s (turns out mum and Mrs. Dafoe like each other and now Mrs. Dafoe likes me), drive ourselves (5.00p.m.) to Jane’s parents house for photos (by Jane’s brother Stephen), Joseph dying in his wool suit (it’s a hot humid July day), me in my little “hippie” dress with a ridiculously deep V in front (it was too tight at the final dressmaker fitting!), stop to pickup wedding-party flowers, but they made a stupid little spray of flowers for my hair instead of the circle I wanted, so we traipse in to the counter (in our wedding outfits) to wait while they fix it, photos, then to church and Greg drags the arm over his portable record player to play The Theme from the Godfather and Oh Happy Days, Mum (on behalf of Dad), hands me over to Joseph and by 7.45 p.m. we are married.
There are 20 guests and us at the reception in our little townhouse and they arrive carrying their own food and drinks (why can’t everybody just drink the Friexnet?). Alexander reads his (very funny) telegrams and we cut the cake that Monty’s mother Miliie made and we toast everybody and everything that is a part of this crazy story. The good part about people bringing their own food is that there is (now) enough - the bad part is that Joseph’s sister Marie made a shrimp dip and when Joseph started having an anaphylactic reaction we realised it was made with tinned shrimp that contained fish (Jospeh is deathly allergic to fish). Its a good thing that Marie is a pharmacist and carries the equivalent of a pharmacy in her bag so she had anti-histamines with her, but taking anti-histamines and drinking and having an anaphylactic reaction turns Joseph from a nice friendly groom into a raging lunatic, who, after finding somebody had short-sheeted and put confetti in our bed upstairs, attacks (thumps head) the first person he runs into (Alexander) on the stairs (it was not Alexander!).
I don’t remember the rest of the night but the next morning we drove Mum and Marie to the airport so they could join their tour and we took off for our over-night “Honeymoon” at an inn north of Montreal (thanks to Joseph’s dad’s $s) and then to live together for the next 44years, 8 months and 17 days.
p.s. there were at least 20 more flights back and forth between Ottawa and Adelaide, I worked as a data-entry operator at four more jobs, and mum came to visit Ottawa four more times (my Dad never did come).
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