Son tracks down father’s grave
After a 68-year search, Peterborough man visits father’s grave in Edmonton
Every time John Noble discovers new information about his father — a man who disappeared 68 years ago, leaving a young wife and three small children to fend for themselves in a rural hamlet in Ontario — a fresh batch of questions emerges from the void.
Seven years ago, the retired mathematics teacher, who lives in Peterborough, began his genealogical journey, picking away at threads in a bid to unravel the mystery of what happened to the man whose first name he shares
That journey found its way to Edmonton on Friday when the 76-year-old finally, after navigating his way around dead ends and administrative roadblocks, visited his father’s military grave at Beechmount Cemetery.
“Up until a few weeks ago, life had a big hole in it,” he said, fighting back tears.
“But I said, if I can put my feet on my father’s grave before I die, I’ll be happy. It will close the circle.
“I feel the circle has been closed.”
Noble’s father’s story began on June 2, 1910, when he was born into a small family in the West Yorkshire town of Ilkley in northern England. John Sr.’s father and grandfather died in quick succession and his mother, unable to make ends meet, shipped the children off to an orphanage.
“Their mother simply couldn’t keep them,” the son said.
In 1924, at age 14, he was transported across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada to work on a farm in Uxbridge, as “one of Fegan’s boys,” Noble said, referring to a program in which, in order to prevent destitute children in care from returning to the streets for a life of crime, they were instead sent to former British colonies as domestic servants or apprentices.
Fast forward to 1937. Noble’s father was working tearing up abandoned train lines owned by Bay of Quinte Railway near the hamlet of Bannockburn, Ont.
That’s where he met Victoria Elizabeth Sandford. She was 15. He was 26. They quickly married.
A year later, in 1938, their first child, Phylis, was born. Noble was born three years later and a year after that came his youngest sibling Burton.
During this time, Noble’s father joined the military and was stationed in Picton for five years, but, midway through his training in 1943, he left his wife and the children.
Noble has applied to Veterans Affairs for discharge papers, but his research leads him to believe his father left military service in 1945 without ever serving overseas
Unable to make ends meet, their mom moved to Belleville to find work and left her children in the care of her parents.
There they stayed for nine years before their mother found a job closer to the family farm and rented a home.
While never knowing for sure why his father left, Noble has an inkling of what happened.
“He was a Fegan boy brought over here when he was 14 years old,” he said.
“He was not equipped to get married and have a family with my mother, who was 15. It was a disaster in the making, literally.
“I went through a lot of angry years because I can understand you leaving my mother, but why me?”
Husband and wife tried to reconcile in 1949, but for some reason they couldn’t make it work and by 1950, Noble’s father, who was working as a chef in Terrace Bay, Ont., had “dropped off the map completely.”
And that’s where the story ended. Or so Noble thought. Noble’s mother died in December 2000.
Three weeks ago, with the help of staff at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, Noble discovered his father was buried in Edmonton. He died of a heart attack on Oct. 2, 1975.
But what happened in those intervening 25 years is still a mystery and one that Noble is determined to understand.
“I was angry at him for a long time until I figured it out,” he said.
“I don’t think it was the fact he didn’t love his children. I think he did. But I just don’t think he could handle that whole situation. Being plucked off the street in England and shipped to Canada, that must have been traumatic.
“I’ve learned a lot over the last few years. You don’t make judgments ... life is too complicated to say you are bad and you are not.
“It’s what he had to do at the time.”
NOTE: If anyone has information about his father, John Noble can be reached via email at pwalker9@hotmail.com .... Watch video at www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com