GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

10. 1958 to Switzerland, and writing freelance

copyright © 2015 WandaS All rights reserved

LESS THAN TWO WEEKS AFTER I FINISHED the 10-week internship at the Tely, my parents saw me off at Toronto's Union Station, on September 10, 1958. The steamer trunk had gone ahead by rail express; I would see it again in Fribourg, Switzerland.

In my purse were stapled tickets from Thomas Cook & Son:  train to Montreal (for a day with Polish friends), on September 12 Sylvania to Liverpool, boat train to Coventry (to visit Mom's uncle and aunt), train to London (to a 2nd cousin and her husband), train to Dover, ferry to Ostend, train to Brussels (to see the first of four World's Fairs in my life), trains to Mannheim, Basel, Berne, and finally Fribourg. I was due in the office of the International Movement of Catholic Students, Pax Romana, on Wednesday, October 1. I wasn't writing a diary any more, just scrambling to arrive.

If this were a travelogue I would, about here, get stuck raving about ocean liners, a type of ship that's now extinct but whose classy style I enjoyed three times in my life. I will never set foot on a cruise ship; that would spoil precious memories.

Liners offered a predictable schedule of sailings year round from Port A to Port B and return. For example, people in New York and Southampton knew when they heard a ship's whistle (odd name for a long, low blast which shook the earth) on any Saturday morning that either Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth was about to depart. They were never together on the same side of the Atlantic.

(The best book about liners, I believe, is John Maxtone-Graham's The Only Way to Cross, published in 1972. On p. 411 is an aerial photo taken in November, 1966, of New York's "Luxury Liner Row", showing Constitution, United States, France, Raffaello, and Queen Elizabeth in their berths.)

My eastward passage in 1958 happened one year after liners lost the trans-Atlantic market to planes: in '57, more people had flown than sailed. IF three-week vacations had already been the norm, IF jets had come on the scene a few years later, IF shipping companies had had enough years more to prove that sailing across the Atlantic truly was the only satisfactory way to cross.... Sadly, they didn't see the writing on the wall in time.

They would have needed about a decade to adjust to the competition from jets, but the new age didn't wait. 

And so we lost the pleasure of being able to cross the Atlantic without offending our Circadian rhythms. During a crossing in either direction clocks were adjusted by one hour a day while we ate great meals, did brisk, novel, challenging things in refreshing sea air, saw first-run movies, swam indoors or out, and especially had time to get to know new people. We reached the other side wide awake and feeling better than ever.

Jetlag immediately began to bother people who flew, although the word wasn't coined until 1966.

Richard J. Needham of the Globe and Mail allowed me time to settle into my Swiss life, then wrote to ask for an article. Of course, his letter and then my piece went by air. We agreed that he would deposit the fee (which I can't recall) directly into my Toronto bank account. Dad had co-signed, and sent me whatever I needed. I kept a carbon copy of my text, and when it was published Dad bought a Globe and sent me a clipping. The one in the subscription copy delivered to our house went into his files.

I was puzzled by the fact that Mr. Needham didn't change a single word, or even cut the length. At Carleton we had been advised to give editors about 10 per cent more words than they asked for, so that they could tighten up, improve, our texts. Mr. Needham asked for "an article about..." without asking for a word count, so I wrote until I ran out of facts.