End of the Line

Epilogue

Epilogue

My father died on the 30th August 1947. I was not yet two.

On that day, he and my mother attended a dinner dance at the Montreal Memorial Hospital. During the dancing, my father started to experience a shortness of breath. He moved to an outside balcony where his breathing became increasingly laboured and he eventually collapsed from lung failure. Despite the best efforts of the doctors in attendance, his breathing could not be restored.

After the funeral, my mother sold the house on Glencoe and moved us in with her brother and his family. They had left Pierce Street and moved to a much larger residence on Coolbrook. To all intents and purposes, I now became a member of the Robinson family, but initially did not lose contact with the Bensons.

Every Sunday my mother took me to visit Granny Benson and Pop at Aunt Mary's. I don't remember Granny as a bedridden old lady suffering every conceivable complication of diabetes, nor do I remember Pop as an embittered senile old man. To me Granny was always the "duchess", Pop a kind old man with big ears and a moustache, who always had a candy for me. So what if from time to time he forgot my name.
Pop and Granny died within ten days of each other. Mary and Ernest moved away soon afterwards- to Belleville. That was over fifty years ago.


In researching this story, I visited Belleville searching for information on Aunt Mary and Uncle Ernest, North Hatley to see if anyone remembered Auntie Belle, and Bancroft in the hope of contacting my cousins. All to no avail. It's as if the Bensons never existed.

Hopefully this tale has proved otherwise.

Jacqueline Benson