Turn the calendar back ninety-six years. It is 1909. Imagine for a moment that your husband has left your home in Belfast, Northern Ireland to seek work in Western Canada and see firsthand whether or not Canada would be a good country in which to settle. Although many are emigrating from the British Isles and Europe, you are unsure and admittedly scared about leaving your family and friends and the green fields of Ireland behind. The reality in those days was that you may never again in your entire lifetime set foot in your homeland. And finally, imagine that when your husband boarded the ship taking him to Canada that he said goodbye to not only you, but to his and your seven children. What would the future bring?
My maternal great-grandfather, John Neill, arrived in Winnipeg in 1909 and found work with Canadian National Railways as a boiler maker. Not long after, he learned about a similar position opening in Edmonton. So in the spring of 1910, John sent for his family. Dorothy McCallen Neill – my maternal great-grandmother – and their children (George, James, Rebecca, Hamilton, Dorothy, John and baby Mary) traveled by ship across the ocean and then by rail from Quebec – a distance of 6,300 kilometres. Dorothy said goodbye to the Irish sea, windswept moors, historic castles and shipbuilding industries (the famous Titanic was being constructed in the in Belfast shipyards that year) and her much beloved family. She was coming to Alberta prairie and a city which was less than one-tenth the size of Belfast. There would be snow in the winters to contend with and an unfamiliar economy based on farming, ranching and the railroad!
Some of my historical “treasures” are photocopies of the letters John wrote to Dorothy during the fifteen months they were apart. The last letter he wrote before his wife and children’s departure from Belfast contained the lines: “… there is hardly an hour goes by me that I do not be thinking about you and them. I bought a nice little frame for you and the children’s photo and I have it sitting on the dressing table in my room. Yours until death, husband John”. This particular letter and others were carefully packed and accompanied Dorothy as she traveled to Canada.
John, Dorothy and the children were reunited in late August 1910 and began their new life in Edmonton, settling in the Oliver area. The family worshipped at Christ Anglican Church and socialized with other Protestant Irish families in the neighbourhood. The children that were old enough attended Oliver School on 118 Street and 102 Avenue and the two oldest boys found work. My great-grandmother might have shopped for warm winter clothing at the Purvis Co. Ltd. on the corner of First Street and Jasper Avenue West or purchased hall carpets at Acme Dept. Stores. The High Level Bridge was under construction the year they arrived.
In 1916, their eighth child was born. She was baptized “Annie” and given the middle name of “Alberta”.
My great-grandparents celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary in 1957 and died within months of each other the following year. They are buried, side by side, in west Edmonton’s Westlawn Cemetery. John and Dorothy never returned to Belfast, not even for a visit.
Like many immigrants, the Neills became proud Canadians. Because John and Dorothy chose to settle here, their children right down to their great-great-grandchildren have been able to call Alberta “home” since 1910. Lines from the song “An Irish Blessing” echo in my mind as a great-granddaughter’s tribute to them:
May the road rise to meet you,May the wind be always at your back,May the sun shine warm upon your face,The rains fall soft upon your fields and,until we meet again,May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
