Latest Botwood mural highlights war brides’ history
Legacy includes about 1,000 descendants
Botwood is now home to a vivid reminder of the legacy of love, dedication and determination so closely associated with the 18 war brides who came to call the town home following the two World Wars.
The Botwood Mural Arts Society unveiled the most recent of its 14 murals depicting local history at a ceremony in late April.
Society president Trudy Stuckless said the group seeks public suggestions on mural sites and topics. The group was delighted to act on the suggestion from Michelle Elliott to honour her grandmother, Helen Knight, and the other 17 war brides from the region with a mural on her hairstyling business at 13 Fernwood Drive.
The mural was created by St. John’s artist Janice Udell.
“Until she took her last breath, my grandmother never lost her accent or her love for Scotland,” Elliott told the Central Wire after the unveiling. “My family has always felt the importance of her heritage, knowing full well it could never have been easy to leave her parents to go to unknown land at such a young age.”
“The murals in Botwood do well to represent the history of our beautiful town,” she continued. “I felt we also needed to acknowledge the ladies who sacrificed so much at such a young age, coming from city life to very rural Newfoundland.
Her grandparents, Fred Knight (who passed away in 2004) and Helen Knight, who passed away in 2010,
were married in Scotland in 1941. They renewed their vows with their family at their 50th wedding anniversary.
Many of the war brides came from cities and were no doubt surprised with the rural way of life they were met with in Newfoundland, added Stuckless, noting there would not have been running water or electricity in the small rural Newfoundland towns around that time.
“A lot of them had to live with the husbands’ parents or grandparents until they got a house ready for themselves.”
“There was a cultural shock for sure,” she said. “They had to learn how to cook differently and there was no milk delivery here like it would have been in London or Edinburgh. It’s amazing so many of them stayed.”
Elliott gave an example of how little her grandmother knew.
“Upon arrival, grandfather tried to prepare her for the new lifestyle. She asked grandfather, ‘At least there will be a bread van there?’” Elliott said. “Much to her surprise, she found out she had to make her own bread, which her mother-inlaw showed her how.”
Though Botwood became home for the couple, there was always a connection to her home country.
“On the last trip to Scotland, my grandfather surprised Nan with a Scottish terrier, Jock. He was her last piece of home (and) they loved him dearly,” she noted.
“I’m not sure what my grandmother would have thought about seeing her portrait on the mural,” Elliott continued. “She had a keen sense of humour but was never one to draw attention to herself. However, I can honestly say I know my grandfather would be proud.”
LEAVING A LEGACY
Stuckless added that pride in the contributions of these war brides was a big factor in pursuing this particular project.
“They were great contributors to the communities they settled in. For example, one of ours was from Scotland and played the bagpipes and she continued that here,” explained Stuckless. “There was another who used to be a ballerina as a child, so she set up a dance school in Botwood … Her name was Sybil Barrett and she ended up writing a memoir entitled Ten for a Wren.
“She was with the Women’s Royal Navy Service,” Stukless explained. “A lot of them are actually veterans themselves, having served in various sections of the military. A lot were actually enlisted themselves. Even those who weren’t, especially those who lived over in England and Scotland, contributed to the war effort in civilian operations … One of our war brides was a Lumberjill in the Women’s Timber Corp in Scotland and worked alongside the men in the forestry unit,” she added.
“It is a bit of a miracle that the boyfriends or husbands whatever survived the war and got home safely and then they traveled across the Atlantic with kids and got here safely and that they actually ended up having a life together.”
“They did settle in and made such a contribution to the communities and to the families in the communities and to our population, of course.” she continued.
Stuckless noted that with an estimated 800 war brides having made the trek and “at least 600” staying, the war brides gave a boost to the population of Newfoundland that, at the time, was its own country.
“We wanted the imagery to be such that anyone with a connection to a war bride could relate to the story,” she added. ”So it's not just a wall of pictures of our war brides, it's the story of these young women crossing the Atlantic, following their hearts to be with the soldiers they fell in love with and married.
“None of our war brides are still living, or their husbands, so we wanted to honour them with a dinner for the relatives. We’ve published a book titled They Followed Their Hearts about these particular war brides for distribution to the families,” Stuckless noted.
“Artist Jackie Alcock from Corner Brook helped design the book and was able to tell us the story about all the war brides,” continued Stuckless. “She did tell us just in her work (on) these 18 war brides, you could estimate that they had about 1,000 descendants. And that’s just those 18, so you can imagine how many descendants there are of the 600.”
Efforts to capture history via murals isn’t finished, noted Stuckless, with three other murals planned for this summer. More details of those projects will be released later.