Strolling to Canada!

Strolling to Canada!

Here I make my way to Canada in 1953 from England, via the U.S.

The evening of my departure for Canada I walked down from my mother's house in Hampstead to the Underground station. I took the ‘tube’ (as we called it) to the main line station of Kings Cross and then the train to Belfast. I was on my way to Northern Ireland to board a freighter, the Empire Trader,  that would take me across the Atlantic to Canada. I was 23, a recent graduate of Cambridge University with a degree in Civil Engineering. No nuts and bolts experience, in fact not much experience in anything useful.

 Along with a British passport and a medical certificate, I had the official Canadian status of ‘Landed Immigrant’.

I didn't have much money so planned to hitchhike the twenty five hundred miles to Vancouver on the western side of Canada. Rather late in the day I realized that the Trans Canada highway was only partially paved, (still 500 miles of gravel) so I thought again and decided to hitchhike across the United States rather than Canada.

I found the Empire Trader tied up in Belfast unloading a cargo of grain, an operation that should have taken two or at the most three days. Because of a dock strike the vessel had been stuck in Belfast for over two weeks. Adding to the delay the vacuum system used for sucking grain out of the ship’s holds was no longer operational--due to an  ‘intentional accident’ it was rumored.

The crew were a cheerful lot, all Greek from the two or three villages adjacent to the Greek mainland. The first mate spoke some English but Captain Nomikos was fluent. It was his first command and the  continued delay unnerved him. Time went by, the strike was settled, the vacuum system restored to operation and early one foggy morning we were on our way to the New World. The ship was ‘in ballast’ (no cargo) so it was pretty lively below deck. Fortunately I seemed to be immune to seasickness and entertained myself by exploring the vessel and helping the mate figure out the structural details of a house he hoped to build in Greece. 

Propulsion was by steam but the reciprocating engines were of 1920s vintage--replaced by steam turbines in more modern vessels. The engineer showed me how to check the temperature of the main bearings by putting my hand on the moving crosshead while the engine was running. A dangerous procedure made more hazardous by the rolling of the ship in the Atlantic swells.

As we approached Newfoundland I went on deck to see icebergs glinting in the late afternoon sun. There must have been scores of them stretching to the coast of Labrador. We were headed up the St,  Lawrence River but stopped briefly at an outpost known as Father Point to pick up a pilot. The pilot was French Canadian and couldn’t or, more likely, wouldn't communicate in English so gave his orders  in French. His helper, with an accent so thick he was barely comprehensible, passed these on in English.

 “A Droit” became “To zee right."

The Captain would then repeat this in Greek to the helmsman saying “Dexia” and only then would the wheel begin to turn.

Late in the day the chief engineer appeared on deck at the wheelhouse for an animated talk with the Captain, of which I understood only one word ‘gasket’. Apparently a seal, or gasket, had blown out and had to be replaced--which meant stopping the engines. When Captain Nomikos explained this to the pilot the latter exploded with rage and (suddenly fluent in English) sputtered ‘This ship has reputation; last time no radar, no depth sounder, now no engine’. So we dropped anchor in the busy fairway, radioed our position (and predicament) to the Canadian coast guard, doubled the lookouts and left the engineers to get on with it.

The next day we were once again under way and by mid afternoon were tied up at the terminal at Sorel, in the St Lawrence River, about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City. Almost before the ship had stopped moving two great conveyor belts were sliding out from the shore to begin loading our next cargo--manganese ore. The vessel was loaded and ready to go that evening so I was suddenly out of a berth and miles from anywhere in a strange country.

An immigration officer was on hand to stamp my papers and very kindly offered me a lift into Montreal. It was getting dark and as we rattled through the little French Canadian villages at breakneck speed, I couldn't help asking if there were no speed limits in Quebec. “Oh, I just give that sonofabitchofa traffic cop a bottle of whisky every year and he don't bother me none”

I spent the night under a span of the Jacques Cartier bridge, listening to the hooting of the locomotives on the opposite shore and wondering what I had got myself into. The next morning, cold and stiff, I crawled out of my sleeping bag, found the toll plaza and headed south towards New York City.

Friends of my sisters, Curt Strand and his wife Fleur had invited me to stay with them and with the help of a street map I found the right section of the city. When I asked my way to the street address I was hampered by my unmistakable English accent. After a number of rebuffs I wrote the address down and waved it at passers by until a couple stopped and gave me directions to Curt and Fleur’s apartment.

My hosts were very hospitable, showed me around, took me for dinner in Chinatown and then to the theatre--a one man piano recital by a Victor Borg. Borg, already  well known, appeared on stage, formally dressed in a tuxedo, sat down at the piano, then stood up, bowed to the audience and said ‘Pardon my Back’. He then sat down again, only to stand once more with ‘Pardon my Front’. At this point I realized that this was going to be no ordinary piano recital.

When it came time to leave I took a bus to the Holland Tunnel, stood near the toll booth and waited for a car to stop...and waited, and waited. About three hours later I got a ride but the driver wound down his window far enough to say “Ain't going very far” and put me down the other side of the tunnel in New Jersey. However that was all I needed and from then on had little difficulty getting rides.

I was propositioned several times (by men) and developed a technique that never failed. I would reach for the door saying: ”Let me out I'm going to throw up” I thought the English equivalent of ‘I'm going to be sick’ didn't have quite the right urgency.

In Pennsylvania I was picked up by a woman driver which was unusual. She wanted to know where I was from and it turned out she had a son at Cambridge and as a mother herself wanted to reassure mine that I was alive and well. So I went home with her and she telephoned my mother in England, who was somewhat surprised to have news of me--and from a perfect stranger.

I soon found out that the best places to hitchhike were transport cafes: the rides were longer--two or three hundred miles or even further. This, of course was before the Interstate Highway system was built, drugs and drug related crime were minimal and the police seldom bothered hitchhikers if they didn't interfere with traffic. I was finally pulled over by a State Trooper who said “I'm going to give you a souvenir of your visit to Colorado” I said naively: “Oh thank you very much” and got my first traffic ticket--this time only a warning.

After a week on the road I began to appreciate the vastness of the country--and I was still barely halfway across it. As I got closer to the Rocky Mountains I was astounded by their scale and majesty--and blanket of snow at the higher elevations. So rather than freeze in my thin sleeping bag I stayed at a motel that night and made sure I was at a lower altitude from then on.

I had no radio but got more than my fill of the commercial radio stations which dominated the air waves west of Chicago.This was long before NPR so the ‘Jesus Stations’ (as they were called) poured out an unending stream of religious propaganda interspersed with political ads and appeals for funds.

On the fourteenth day after leaving New York I got my last ride into downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. It seemed a modern city at first glance but was actually an odd mixture of old wood frame homes converted to rooming houses, one-night hotels, a multitude of bars and other remnants of Vancouver’s pioneering past. It included an original ‘Skid Row’--now frequented by out of work loggers, beggars and the cannedheateaters. These unfortunates were addicted to Sterno (methyl alcohol) a widely available intoxicant. If consumed in sufficient quantity it would cause the victims to lose their sight.

I took a trolley out to a more salubrious area: the campus of the University of British Columbia. There I met up with a sailing friend, Elizabeth Ratcliffe and her young son, Donald where I would be staying for the next several months.This gave me a welcome chance to rest my feet, look for a job and explore my new home.