Learning the value of remembrance and citizenship

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Nov. 29, 1941.

Hope dies hard on a bright autumn afternoon when you are only 12 years old. Mary Bell Andrews watched the door of the schoolroom with her heart beating in her throat. The Remembrance Day program was beginning and it seemed that every other girl’s mother was there but hers. Mary Bell had been up since six in the morning, helping her mother with the work. All morning her mother had been in a gay humour, looking forward to the program.

Surely she would come to hear Mary Bell deliver the Governor General’s address, which that day was going out to all the schools in the province. Hadn’t Mary Bell won this proud honour in fair competition with all the seniors? Mary Bell couldn’t believe that her mother would disappoint her.

But the hands of the clock went on relentlessly, and now the boys of Grade 5 were reciting in unison:

“O valiant hearts who to your conflict came

Through dust of conflict and through battle flame.”

Mary Bell was proud of her mother and wanted the other girls to see her, with her beautiful wavy black hair and the long black lashes over her blue eyes. She wanted to feel her presence in the room. She hoped her mother would meet the other women, like them, and neighbour with them.

She was too much inclined to stay alone. That was why she sometimes grew depressed and moody. Now they had come to this new district, Mary Bell had hoped that she would make a beginning today at this first school party.

The school was dressed up for Remembrance Day. There were crimson chrysanthemums on the desk, on the walls in bracket vases, and there was a border of acorns and poppies in coloured chalk around the verses on the board. The teacher, tall and graceful, had on her green velvet dress with her amber beads. But Mary Bell’s pride in these worldly things was fast ebbing away as she remembered other celebrations when her mother had failed to come, and her young companions had remarked on it with the cold brutality of the young.

For a few panicky moments, Mary Bell felt she couldn’t give the message unless her mother came; every word of it seemed to have left her, and her eyes were heavy with tears. What would Miss Grant think of her if she went to pieces now and had to actually leave the room? The Grade 6 were singing:

“Teach me to bear the yoke in youth

With steadfastness and careful truth.”

The yoke in youth! That must be what she was bearing, but certainly she was not bearing it with steadfastness. It was pressing down on her — it was smothering her. Then she heard Miss Grant announcing that the “Governor General’s message will be given this year by Mary Andrews, our new pupil from Manitoba.”

The words came back to her as she stood facing the people, and her voice was clear and firm:

“This is a war where everyone has a part. Even the youngest of you who are now listening to my voice … Freedom is something that has to be fought for every day. We thought we had won it in 1918 but the evil thing we had defeated then has come back …

“Force, brutality, cruelty abroad; selfishness, bad temper, laziness at home; we must fight all of them. All all-out war calls for an all-out defence. Children in Britain put out fires; children in Russia and China actually bear arms; children of Canada, you, too, can help.

“You can give up your luxuries so that other children can have necessities. You can help your teachers and parents by your cheerfulness and obedience. You can help to create a spirit of good will and understanding in your own homes and on the playground … Canada expects your help in this hour of destiny.”

Mary Bell, for the moment, was lifted out of her troubles by the power in the words she had spoken. But when the exercises were over she ran home across the fields, feeling that she did not wish to speak to anyone. She found her mother in a dour mood.

“I couldn’t go, Mary Bell,” she said in her sick voice. “Your father and I had a dreadful quarrel. He’s gone off to town in a temper and you know what that means. I was all ready to go when he came in from the field. He broke his cultivator and told me he would have to go to town to get it fixed. All I said to him was it was strange how may excuses he found to go to town, and one word led to another. He flew into a white rage and told me a tongue like mine would drive any man to drink.”

“If you’d only been out of the house before he came in,” said Mary Bell, “there would have been no quarrel. I’ll bet Dad was feeling sore about what happened to the cultivator and what you said just finished him.”

“Are you going to turn against me, too, after the way I’ve sacrificed for you, and gone shabby myself to keep you well dressed. Well, I’m going to bed now. My head is just splitting and I don’t care what happens to me.”

Mary Bell had a heavy heart for a little girl of 12, as she washed up the noon dishes and tidied the kitchen. Still there was left in her mind a little of the radiance she had caught from the words she had recited. She loved both her father and mother, but she saw them now more clearly than ever before.

Her mother never would hold her tongue when she saw a chance to give her father a “dig” and he had one sure way of getting back at her. They never seemed to learn, either of them. She wished that she could talk to them and tell them how foolish and wicked it was.

Mary Bell carried a tray to her mother at suppertime and tried to tell her about the afternoon, but Mrs. Andrews was deep in the mire of self-pity.

“He’ll spend more money before he comes home than I see in a month, and yet you’re sticking up for him. That’s a mother’s reward!” she cried into her pillow. “I told him if he wasn’t home at 10 tonight I’d lock the door on him; and I will, if it’s the last thing I do. And he knows I’ll keep my word.”

It was a long evening in the Andrews home. Florence, the eldest daughter, who worked in town, came home on the bus, and she and Mary Bell sat in the kitchen eating their supper.

“You can’t do anything about Mother,” said Florence bitterly. “She really loves an afternoon like this. She sees herself as the Queen of Grief. It’s her way of going on a spree. And he likes his out of a bottle.

“Then they make up and go on quite pleasantly for a while. They are two quiet, decent people who, every so often, have a fairly good time making each other miserable. But you and I can’t help it. Children can’t reform their parents.”

“But Mother is wonderful,” Mary Bell interrupted, “and no one could be kinder than she is, Florence. Don’t you remember, when you had the sore knee, how she read and sang to you. She’s witty and beautiful.”

“That’s true enough,” Florence replied. “If Dad should become permanently disabled she would be the perfect wife with never a frown on her face. But she gets bored, I think, and then creates a diversion.

“Well, I think I’ll go out for the evening. I like to be out of the way when the feud is on. You had better come with me — I’ll take you to a movie in town.” Mary Bell shook her head. “I must stay,” she said. “I’m going to do something about it this time. I don’t know what, but I’m going to try. If they could only realize that Canada is at war.”

After Florence left, Mary Bell sat alone, wondering what she could do.

“There may be lots of houses like this,” she said to herself, “and may be that’s one reason war comes. All these little wars added together. It’s something like the evil spirit that the man had who lived among the tombs, and perhaps only God can stop it.”

At 10, Mary Bell went to her room and tried to study. She heard her mother go softly down the stairs to lock the door, and when she was safely back in her room Mary Bell went down and unlocked it. And just at that moment her father drove into the wagon yard. She put on the kitchen light and set the kettle on to boil and waited from him. She was so relieved to see he was all right that he kissed him impulsively.

“I’m sorry about your party, Mary Bell,” he said. “I forgot that this was your big day. Your mother didn’t go, I suppose, and you were terribly disappointed. When I remembered that, I felt like a heel.

“I was in a restaurant having my supper and that message come on as a rebroadcast. It all sounded familiar, and then I remembered, these were the words you were practising.

“I had been in a pretty black mood and had intended to buy a bottle, but I didn’t do it, Mary Bell. I bought something else, and I’m glad to find you up to tell you. I heard what the governor said, that children could bring a spirit of good will and understanding into their homes, and I saw then that there was nothing very smart about some of the things that I’ve been doing.

“So, instead of spending money in the usual way, I got something for your mother and bought you this — just to show you that your school program had some effect, even though it came in a roundabout way.”

He felt in his pocket and took out a folder. It was a Savings Certificate with each space filled. “There, write your name on that, Mary Bell, and accept my apology for a good day spoiled.”

“O, but you haven’t spoiled it, Dad,” cried Mary Bell happily: “I’ll never forget this day. I know it is the beginning of something for all of us. I’m proud of you, Dad, and proud to be a citizen — a real citizen!”

Some of McClung's columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada's Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.