When Dad left [Inverness], it was February of ’52. and he stayed for our anniversary, but I don’t know when after that he left, shortly after. We had a bad winter. We were snowed in; they had to shovel us out one time.

I was there two or three months, and I used to worry about the stove, because we had a big stove in the living room. It was called a Warm Morning; that’s what it was called. And Freddie used to say, now, bank it at night so it won’t go out. And every day I used to call him. “How do I bank it?” And you would put coal in, but then you put ashes in on top of the coal, from below the stove.

I was always so worried about that. I was so afraid. I would lie in bed at night and think, if there’s going to be a fire, now I could put the kids out on the — there was a porch in front, you know, from your bedroom, I could put the kids on top of the porch. This is what I used to plan at night.

Anyway, the time came, Freddie had no housekeeper for the three kids. And I had to sell that house anyway, before I’d leave. So he talked me into selling the house and moving over there [with him]. And I did that. Sold the house for eighteen hundred dollars. That’s what we paid for it, can you believe it?

And we moved over there, stored some of my furniture at Pa’s and took a little bit with me. I suppose I took the bed, I don’t know.

But anyway, we moved in. We had six kids. I don’t think Frankie was seven yet. Three in diapers — you, and Jackie, and Art. But the kids got along great.

If you remember, Freddie’s street was the next street to the main street. This was Campbell Street. And the back yard of Freddie’s was at the back yard of this restaurant, the Greek’s restaurant. Harry the Greek’s.

And you would go down there — you were kind of a loner. You would go down there and go in. You made great friends with the truckers; they’d be in there. You must have been — I think you were two and a half, maybe, but you could talk like a lawyer.

And these truckers would give you money. And you would buy candy, and you never waited for change. You’d take the bag of candy and you’d come home and you’d treat all our little kids — you were generous, you’d treat them all with the candy. And you did that over and over and over again.

And sometimes you’d go down and there wouldn’t be truckers there, you know. But the girl in the restaurant had a glass, and she would put your change in the glass when you didn’t wait for it. So you could go in and order candy, and she’d take the money out of the glass pay for it.

And you’d bring it — oh, you did that so many times, and you’d bring it home and treat the kids.

Just wander down there by your self. But you know, at that time in Inverness, you didn’t worry. You couldn’t get lost. Everybody knew everybody’s kids.

One day you didn’t come home, and I got worried. And we started looking, and we couldn’t find you. We looked, oh god, we even looked down by the mine. Going crazy. And coming back, I walked up the side of — I don’t know if it was Harry the Greek’s place or the next building — and there you were, asleep on the grass.

You got tired and you laid down.

Dad: Hughie Ferguson, Greet’s husband
Freddie: Freddie Macdonald, Greet’s brother; a widower with three children
Pa: Jack D Macdonald, father of Greet and Freddie

[This] 1935 photo of Jack D and Annabel is Jack D.’s railroad pass with his wife’s photo on it so that she could travel free as well, along with the children.

The story that photo reminds me of is one my father told me. He was in grade 10 and on a beautiful spring day as he was walking home from school he heard the train getting ready to leave the station.

He gave his books to someone, Greet possibly, and ran to jump on the train and ride it out to the trestle, a mile or so outside of town, and walk back, a not uncommon boyhood activity here. I even did it myself once.

The difference was that my father jumped the train to the trestle and came home two or three years later.

It was the Depression and he spent a lot of time hoboing through northern Ontario and Quebec, “riding the rods” as they called, hanging on the bottom of a train if a boxcar couldn’t be opened. He ran into people from home who were scattered across the country looking for work like himself and they often travelled together.

He remembered it was damned cold a lot of the time riding the trains, and the advantage he had over those he was travelling with was that he had a railroad pass in his pocket because his father worked for the railroad but was too proud to use it.

Eventually he came back home and went back to school in the same class as Greet and they graduated together.

My father: Freddie Macdonald
Greet: Greet Macdonald, Freddie’s sister
Jack D: Jack D Macdonald, Freddie and Greet’s father
Annabel: Annie Belle Rankin, Jack D’s wife

Reading John’s story about getting Greet to peel the grapes reminded me of a Christmas in my early 20s when I was home in Trenton [Nova Scotia] for a visit. I was watching television with my father, Freddie, and reached over to the coffee table and took some gumdrops out of a bowls and began eating them.

Dad looked at me funny then asked, “Can you eat gumdrops?” and when I said yes, went on to tell me the following story.

He had come home from work one afternoon in Inverness and walked into the kitchen in our house on Campbell Street. I was sitting in a high chair and my mother, Kit, was sitting in a chair in front of me with a scowl on her face shoving gumdrops into my mouth one after another.

When dad asked what was going on she told him that she had been trying to bake a gumdrop cake and had given me a gumdrop to chew on to keep me quiet. Big mistake because my first tooth was a sweet tooth. I began crying for more, and got another one, and then cried some more and got another one until she finally became so fed up with me that she sat with the bowl of gumdrops feeding them to me, telling my father, “When he finishes this bowl he’ll never want another one!”

My father had assumed until that night that my mother was right and gumdrops would be off my life’s menu. How wrong she was! I’m not too fond of gumdrop cake, though, which is probably is rooted in childhood guilt acquired while seated in a high chair.

Freddie: Freddie Macdonald, Frank’s dad
Kit: Catherine Gillies, Freddie’s wife and Frank’s mother

[Hughie Ferguson's brother Johnny] died before John [Ferguson] was born [April, 1948]. I went home from Halifax because we didn’t have any money to have a baby in Halifax, and it would be cheaper at home. So I went home to Inverness in March, and Johnny Ferguson picked me up at the station because he had a car. And he drove me home.

And he said to me on the way up to Jack D’s, he said, “I have one hell of a sore throat.” He was sucking those cough drop things.

And he came in with me and he talked with Momma and Poppa for a bit, and then he left. And Momma said, “My God, how good John Ferguson looks. I wish our Freddie would put on a little weight.”

Freddie was after having stomach surgery and he was skinny as a rail.

And anyway, I don’t remember what day it was, but it was about two days later when I got up in the morning I came down stairs and Poppa said, “John Ferguson died.”

I said, “What John Ferguson?” And he said, “Hughie’s brother.” He died that suddenly.

He apparently had diphtheria.

It was wintertime, March was winter down there . He went home and got very sick that night, and the next day he was taken to the hospital.

Well, I didn’t have any way of knowing any of this, and he died the next night. And since it was diphtheria, they couldn’t have a wake. He went from the hospital to the church with a closed casket, and was buried like that.

And then they quarantined Mina and the three kids for, I don’t know, a month or something they were quarantined.

So when that happened, Sadie [Ferguson] went over. She said, “I’m going in quarantine with with Mina. She can’t stay there alone with three kids,” you know.

And Hughie used to sneak over at night. Janice said that today. She said, “I can remember Frank Chisholm coming over and passing the pie in through the window.”

John died that suddenly. It was an awful shock to the town. Mattie was upset about it, very upset. Because there was no need of anybody dying of diphtheria at that time….
You could have had a shot for it.

Like Mattie said, if he’d had the old doctor, Dr. Proudfoot, who was real good– Dr. Proudfoot would have smelled it. He would have swabbed that right away, you know… but nothing much was done.

And Dr. Ratchford was the doctor who was looking after him, and very shortly afterward, Dr. Ratchford left town and went to another town.

But it was horrible. There was no excuse for anybody dying of diphtheria. That was in the 40s, and he was only 33.

Johnny Ferguson: son of Mattie Ferguson, brother of Hughie Ferguson.
John Ferguson: son of Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald.
Poppa: Jack D Macdonald, Greet’s father.
Momma: Annie Belle Rankin, Greet’s mother.
Freddie: Greet Macdonald’s brother.
Sadie: Sadie Ferguson, sister of Hughie and Johnny.
Mina: Elizabeth MacFarlane, wife of Johnny Ferguson.
Janice: daughter of Johnny Ferguson and Mina MacFarlane.

During World War II “Rugged” MacDonald enlisted in the Seaforth Highlanders out of Vancouver as a soldier and piper. My father (Freddie), was turned down by the air force because of a busted ear drum and joined the Merchant Marines for a time.

At some point, probably 1943-44, Dad was in England. In what he described as a time of misunderstanding and confusion he tried to locate Rugged. There was a pub where Canadians in England frequented, and they had a blackboard there where Canadians could write their names and how to contact them in case “somebody from home” happened into the same bar.

Dad and Rugged may have found each other far sooner except for Cape Breton’s odd association with names and nicknames. Because they were in the service they had to use their birth names. Well Freddie Macdonald’s name was actually Donald Angus, and Rugged MacDonald’s name was Francis, so even though both names were scribbled on the blackboard neither of these old friends from back home recognized the other.

Eventually, though, Dad learned where Rugged’s outfit was training and took a train to there and went to visit him. He described to me that once he got on the base and followed directions, he found Rugged sitting on a hill in his uniform playing his chanter. They spent a couple of days together before Dad had to get back to his ship and before Rugged shipped out for…even he didn’t know where.

As they parted, they decided to swap souvenirs. Rugged took off his army belt and Dad took out his wallet. “I’ll get this back to you after the war,” Rugged told Dad.

What happened next was that the Seaforth Highlanders took part in the invasion of Sicily and Rugged was killed by a sniper while playing the pipes. This took place after the battle, I was told, and when the soldiers thought the area was secure.

Dad left the Merchant Marines and went to Montreal where he met my mother (Catherine, called Kit Gillies). This period in their lives is a story in itself, but the outcome was that they decided to marry and made their way back to Inverness.

Shortly after returning, Angus Gillies, my mother’s father, died suddenly. My parents had bought a small bungalow on Campbell Street and were building a house around it. (It is now 33 Campbell Street.)

One day, the station master arrived at their house with a trunk. It was addressed to Angus Gillies but since he was no longer living the station master brought it to my mother.

My father told me that one of the most haunted moments of his life was standing in the kitchen watching my mother open the trunk and seeing, sitting on the very top of the contents, his leather wallet.

What had never come up in their conversations was that Rugged, one of my father’s best friends, was a first cousin to my mother, and as his ‘next of kin’ he had written Angus Gillies when he enlisted.

As a boy, the wallet and the belt were always around the house. Unfortunately, in the many moves (and lack of understanding and respect for these items) they became lost. The wallet accidently went through the washing machine and became stiff and useless. I have sent it to my nephew, Michael, in Calgary because if it can be rehabilitated at all, he’s the person who can do it.

This is a story I remember my father telling me, although lots of the details have been forgotten so I’m posting what remains before that, too, becomes lost.

Kind of spooky, huh?

My father told me that during the war, when he joined the Merchant Marines, he had to present a birth certificate as proof of identification. He sent home for his baptismal certificate and when it came he learned that he was Donald Angus, not Fred, Macdonald.

He was also detained for a moment because of it until his identity was verified, which at the time was easier to do than today. (Today, I suspect he would have been sent to Syria for further interrogation.)

When Dad was born, his aunt Catherine (and our great aunt Catherine, the source of many stories…) was home and even though Dad was an infant she was convinced that he looked just like her boyfriend-du-jour, a guy called Freddie, and she began calling him that and it just stuck. Nobody ever thought to tell him different.

February 4, 2006

One summer when I was a teenager, my family went to Inverness, like we did every year. While we were there, my cousin Jackie (Freddie’s daughter) and I went to the cemetery. She spent more time in Inverness than I did, and I asked her to show me graves where relatives were buried.

She showed me this one and that one. Then she stopped for a while at a headstone for D. A. Macdonald. After a minute, I asked who that was.

“Daddy,” she said.

“What’s the D. A. for?”

“Donald Angus. That was his name.”

My entire life, I’d known him as Freddie.

Some thirty years later, I was in Detroit for my dad’s 80th birthday. Lots of people had come from out of town, even some from Nova Scotia. I ended up talking with my cousin Gerard Ferguson (Roddie and Pat’s boy), whom I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager. I often stayed with his family when we were in Inverness. I told him this story, finished up with “I never knew his name was Donald Angus.”

Gerard said, “Neither did I till you told me.”