Ever had a letter or email change your life?
By Bill Fox/Columnist
My life was completely changed not as a result of a letter or email, but a telegraph…a telegraph that we never received in time!
For you youngsters, telegraphs were the early editions of emails from the 1950s! I was five years old, and my mother, younger brother and I were waiting in London, England to fly stand-by to Toronto. My dad and uncle had gone ahead months earlier to find work. They both succeeded in getting jobs at the old de Havilland aircraft plant. However, things didn’t work out well, as they both were eventually laid off.
My Dad, now 94, has been hospitalized of late and will no longer be able to return to his house. As a result, I have been going through his affairs, preparing to sell his house. While going through an envelope containing their marriage and birth certificates, I came across this telegraph sent in August 1951 to my mom. I could not believe that they had kept the original telegraph that read:
“CANCEL FLIGHT. NO JOB. NO HOUSE. RETURNING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. LETTER FOLLOWING. LOTS OF LOVE. BILL”
Luckily, my dad had an uncle already in Canada who lived in a one-bedroom apartment above a store on the Danforth in Toronto. He gladly shared that apartment with our family until my dad eventually found work. Dad worked hundreds of extra overtime hours for the Scarborough Township, as they were then known before amalgamating with Toronto, so that our standard of living could improve. My mom did daycare in the house so we could be raised in our own home.
It reminds me of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. In the film, an angel helps a compassionate but frustrated businessman by showing what life would have been like if he never existed. You might remember that George was shown how much he had influenced so many other people in his life. In a sense, I have been thinking over how much the lives of others would have been so different if we had just received that telegram.
How my life would have been had my mom got that telegraph! We never would have come to Canada. I would have never met my wife and, of course, we together would not have had four fantastic sons, and two beautiful granddaughters had the telegraph just been received in time.
I like to think that I have had a good influence on many of my students over the course of the 40 years I have been in education. I know I have received some letters and emails attesting to their success and giving me some credit in guiding their lives.
How do these things happen? Just by chance? I don’t think so. I believe in a higher power that I call God, who helps us in difficult situations, almost like a guardian angel. Mine has been doing a bang-up job.
As I was born in Birmingham England, I suspect if we stayed there, the opportunities would have been very limited. I could have spent my life working in coal mines instead of coming to the land of opportunity and being encouraged by my parents to get as much education as I could.
Perhaps, that is one reason I can relate to recent immigrants to our country. Our family were also immigrants and I like to think that we have made positive contributions to our great country of opportunity, just as many of you and your families have.
In fact, you would not be reading this column had that telegraph been received!
I can be reached, not by telegraph, but by email at bdfox@rogers.com where you might want to share your own immigrant story.