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three We Arrive in Mayerthorpe I should have known what I was getting into when I got married in August 1949, for I couldn’t claim the innocence of most unsuspecting young girls who marry ministers. I knew quite well what it was to live in a community to which one could never belong. When I was a small child, my family had moved from Toronto to the countryside, to live on farmland between two small villages. My father commuted to the city to his law practice—something none of my classmates’ fathers did. We went to school in Port Credit, Ontario, and to church in nearby Cooksville. I learned at an early age that the only way one can really belong to a small community is to be born there. And long before I had any idea I might end up marrying a parson, I had a clear picture of the odd sort of people some communities expect their minister and wife and family to be. When I was growing up, the minister’s children very often spent Sunday afternoons at our place. Since we lived two miles out of the village and had no close neighbours , they were free to enjoy youthful hijinks without anyone being the wiser. These pastimes were harmless: skating on the pond in winter, swimming in it in summer, singing and playing instruments around our piano, and for a short interval walking around on homemade stilts. We once organized a circus. The wife of one of our ministers told my mother that she dare not let her son even play catch in their backyard on Sunday afternoon because the neighbours would object. I knew at an early age that such a circumscribed life was not for me. When I finally took the plunge and got engaged to Jim, no one was more surprised than I. I had no doubts about the man—that was what did me in—but I was really concerned about the profession, or perhaps I should say the institution, into which I was marrying. Some of my friends, who ought to have known better, acted as if they expected me to change my personality overnight. They began to edit their speech 14 when I was with them. They would start to tell a good story and then stop and apologize for telling it to me. The alarming thing was that they were not trying to be funny. They were supposedly being considerate, though of what I was not sure. In addition, I was given all kinds of advice from ministers and their wives who were friends of my family, some conflicting, some helpful, and some I was never able to test. (One gave me a book written by a minister’s daughter, which turned out to be a eulogy of her sainted mother. When I read it, I felt anything but saintly.) When I learned that our first home would be in a small village of four hundred people in northern Alberta, I was relieved. All the Westerners I had ever met had been warm and friendly people. They surely wouldn’t have the rigid expectations concerning their minister’s wife that had been current in my childhood. If I was going to marry a parson, I was certain that it would be easier for me to settle in the West than in the more formal East, and I was happy about the prospect. An elderly and very wise minister admonished me never to make any remarks about my husband’s sermon on a Sunday. Comment, if any, should be reserved until at least Wednesday. By that time I would have forgotten the point I wanted to make and that would be just as well. This was the most valuable suggestion of any I was given, but I found it difficult if not impossible to follow. I wrote Jim, then in Mayerthorpe, that all this advice was giving me terribly cold feet about our forthcoming marriage. He didn’t seem to take me seriously, and we never discussed it further. But at the family dinner held before the wedding, he made a short speech and then with considerable flourish presented me with a pair of bed socks. Jim began sending me pictures of the manse, inside and out, so that we could plan what we needed to take. I thought the house a little small, but at least it was a house. Many of my married friends, caught by the...

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