Eleven of Thirty: Remembrance Day Reflections

My mother was attending school in England when WWII broke out. She was studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London. After she passed away in 1988, I found the diary she had kept during those years. Much of it recorded the tedium of daily living as a music student - piano lessons, violin lessons, harmony lessons, and the endless hours of practice. But here and there she recorded glimpses of life beyond the walls of the school.

Her diary actually started in 1938 before she left for England. She and her mother had moved from British Columbia to New Brunswick (my grandmother's original home). She ended up staying in Woodstock for a while and wrote, for example, (Monday, July 25, 1938) that she "went to the show (movies) and saw 'Rosalie' starring Nelson Eddy." Yet most entries continued to refer to her daily piano practicing sessions. Her career as a concert pianist, and later teacher, was launched.

In early August she and my grandmother took the train to Montreal - sitting up in the coach section all night. From there, they went on by train to Quebec City and spent the night at a YWCA hotel - site seeing and writing post cards. On Saturday, August 13th, 1938, they boarded the Empress of Britain, setting sail for England and life as a student at 2:p.m. that afternoon.

On the second day they hit a storm and spent much of the remainder of the voyage in their stateroom, apparently suffering violent sea sickness.

They arrived in Southampton on the evening of August 18th, 1938 and took the train to London. The rest of the diary for that year and most of 1939 recorded the minutiae of her days - studying, practicing, walking, shopping and visiting with friends for tea or dinner.

In mid-1940 the entries became filled with references to the war. She recorded getting fitted for a gas mask, that must have been a terrifying experience. In mid August, 1940, she wrote about the daily air raids, sometimes several per day, and hearing the warning sirens and planes overhead. She chronicled hearing the bombs fall, seeing flames from fires in east London, and being up at all hours of the night as a result. Interspersed with these records were her remarks about daily life - shopping, practicing and those rare occasions when she actually got a full night's sleep.

Despite all that, she completed three degrees and won gold, silver and bronze medals in performance from the RAM.

The entries stop on Saturday, August 31, 1940 when she went to the passport office and Cunards (the shipping line) presumably to book passage back to Canada - all while avoiding three air raids that day.

Alice May (Eccles) Wright

b: 1910
d: 1988