The Serial: Far From the Rowan Tree Day 1

By Margaret Gillies Brown

Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined or expected such spectacular beauty

After the Second World War and in the 1950s in particular, a great many people left the shores of Britain for other countries. They were encouraged to do so, especially by the governments of both Canada and Australia, who were seeking to fill up their vast empty lands with people from the west. Every newspaper carried glowing advertisements hoping to entice people to take the leap into the unknown.

The Scots, always a people of emigration and adventuring, were not behind in this exodus.

In the vanguard went one young Scottish couple with three pre-school age children choosing to go to Alberta, an as-yet little known state in western Canada, reputed to be emerging as an oil-rich province – a frontier land at the hindmost area of the prairies where the great Rocky Mountains rose as a bastion before the Pacific Ocean.

The recruiting countries held out attractive lures of assisted passages and worthwhile jobs. Alberta offered work from silver mines at Yellow Knife to the farming of virgin soil further south.

This particular family elected to pay their own passage but to go under the auspices of the Canadian National Railway. 1t would be a long journey – five days by ship over the Atlantic and four days on the Transcontinental train, The Prairie Schooner, crossing a vast sea of land in the white grip of an Arctic winter, to Edmonton.

There they were to be allocated a job on a farm and a furnished house, somewhere in Alberta. Little did they know what lay in store for them.

Curtains of light

Redwoods Alberta, St Valentine’s Day 1959.

At 4am on that first February morning after we arrived at Redwoods, I stepped outside our shack standing all on its own in the very heart of the Westlands.

Many coloured curtains of light shifted across the dark bowl of night. Their silent, wide sweeping movements, reminded me of searchlights in wartime. But they had been dull in comparison to these shot silk waves of brilliance.

Moving, with a sense of excitement, these Northern Lights swayed backward and forward and were reflected on a field of virgin snow that stretched on beyond the sight of human eye.

At intervals, orange flames leaped upward like wild demons. Oil had been found here; these flames were manifestations of the burning off of natural gas that would otherwise have exploded underground or spread poisonous fumes into the atmosphere.

The scattered clumps of dark spruce trees alone were still. I stood in amazement, just looking. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined or expected such spectacular beauty.

I didn’t stand for long. lt was intensely cold. With gloved hand I took hold of the freezing cast-iron handle of the pump that stood at the side of the shack. It was quite some time before water appeared and when it did it gushed out in great spurts, spilling over the battered kettle’s rim and freezing instantly on my shoes.

Then I heard them! They broke the silence like banshees, frightening the night. My heart froze within me. What beasts made so eerie a sound? Were they hungry? Had they smelled human flesh. I hurried back into the shack and closed the rickety door.

It was warm inside. Life came back into my heart and limbs. I could feel my cheeks glowing. The oil heater in the corner of the boys’ bedroom gave off a steady glow.

Heat came also from the cast-iron cook stove which I had banked up with green logs before going to bed. It wasn’t quite out.

I poked it. It spluttered into life. Slowly flames began to curl round the fresh logs. I placed the kettle on the fire.

I heard movement coming from the couch behind me and a voice thick with sleep saying: “My God! where am I ... ?”

Reality

It had been only a few days earlier that I had woken to find a bright ray of winter sun had drifted up the eiderdown that covered the large hotel bed and had landed on my white pillow.

It was a moment or two before dream gave way to reality. This was the day I had been waiting for – the beginning of the long journey, the start of an adventure. I looked at my watch; 8.30, time enough.

I lay back on the pillow, enjoying the crisp feel of the linen sheets and snuggled into my sleeping companion. How young he looked, I thought; how untroubled after all he’d been through. lt’s a wonder it didn’t show more. Six years ago we’d met and fallen in love. Six months later we were married. He hadn’t changed much. (More tomorrow.)