The Lansdowne Letters: The Delousings

I wouldn't be sharing my family stories today
were it not for my paternal grandmother,
Myrtle Pratt MacBeath.

When my father began writing his Lansdowne Letters,
he asked his mother to save them.

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved





Sometimes she and my father would agree to burn
very personal letters they had written to each other,
but most of my father’s letters survived,
thanks to Nana’s efforts to preserve them.

My mother wrote frequent letters too,
but only a few of hers have survived,
also due to her mother-in-law’s effort.

I imagine that many of the letters my mother wrote to her mother
went up in flames in the trash barrel in her mother’s backyard.
My maternal grandmother, Ella Cossaboom MacDonald,
believed that many things should be consigned to the flames,
perhaps because her family history contained dark secrets.



I can still see Grammie in all kinds of weather feeding the flames
in her trash barrel near the old apple tree that we used to swing from.


The surviving Northern letters eventually found their way to me,
and I am grateful that Nana saved this letter written by my mother,
not just for the details of our days in the North,
but because it reminds me of what a rock she was for our family.
No matter what storm waves slammed her, my mother stood firm.

When the Indian Agent unexpectedly summoned my father
via radio to Nakina on the departing mail plane, 
he refused to tell my father the reason for the sudden trip.

My parents assumed the worse,
that another of my father's letters about the poor Indians
in Lansdowne House had hit the Canadian press
(Thanks to me and my Junior Red Cross project).

They thought he was about to lose his job.
They had no idea that Mr. Gowan would send Dad
on the overnight train from Nakina to North Bay,
again with no explanation.

No one would guess from reading this letter
that my mother spent four anxious days waiting for my father 
to fly back to Lansdowne House and tell her what was going on.
My parents had gambled everything on moving North,
and it would have been a disaster for my father to lose his job.

My mother stood firm.
She carried on with no idea when Dad would return,
even teaching school for him while he was absent.
There is no one I admire more than my steadfast mother.

She was the rock on which we rode out many storms,
sheltered by her love and her belief that everything would work out.  





On Thursday, June 1, 1961
My mother wrote to her mother-in-law,
Myrtle MacBeath:

Dear Mother:
I haven't gotten a line off to you recently.

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved








It was a madhouse here lately getting ready for break-up,
and then Don leaving unexpectedly for North Bay.

I taught school for him all day Monday,
washed all day Saturday at the nursing station,
and on Sunday I had Sunday school for the children
and started out for a wiener roast with them,
but had to come back for the wind was too cold.
We had our picnic in the house.
They all seemed to enjoy it anyway.






Sunday morning bright and early
Roy opened his gifts from you.

He and Louise are both reading the book you sent.

The shirt and socks are lovely.
The children were all delighted
with the candy, tablets, and pens.

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved

Don got word Friday morning that he was leaving that day.
We were having a party in the afternoon for Roy, Glennie, and Duncan Jr.
Their birthdays were on the 26th and Roy’s on the 28th,
so we decided to celebrate them all at the same time.

I made Roy a birthday cake, an angel cake,
and I added walnuts and cherries to it and decorated it
with white icing and little round colored candies.
It looked very nice.

Roy received two t-shirts, a silk Hawaiian shirt,
a water pistol, and a cap pistol (from Louise).
Don gave him a pair of fins and a snorkel outfit
when he came back from North Bay.
All in all Roy had a very nice birthday.

The weather has been very beautiful.
The lake is so much prettier without the ice.
We went on a picnic the Sunday before last
up the lake in the canoe and took along a camp stove.
We had a lovely time.
It was difficult to keep the children out of the water,
and it was still freezing cold.




Roberta goes to play with Glennie and Duncan in the mornings
quite frequently.  It is the only solution to our problem,
for they have a fence all around the yard which is big. 
They play in a sandbox and have a great time covering each other with sand.

We are all excited about going to Sioux Lookout;
and, of course, Don is looking forward to his new job.
It will be good to have a bath tub again,
also a dentist, for I think Mike pulled the wrong tooth.
This isn’t Mike’s fault because he isn’t a dentist and pulled the one I indicated.

A lot of the Indian children had fleas, or is it lice, the kind Louise got in Atholville.
Our children and about two Indians didn’t have any,
but Mike had to spray ours today for fear
the Indians might think they were being discriminated against.


Father Ouimet and Brother Bernier were to come over for Bridge
on Tuesday evening, but the Father cut his hand badly on a planer.
He removed nearly half of one finger, and so he couldn’t come.
Mr. Pratt came with the Brother, and the Brother and I beat them,
but not by much.  Most of our games seem to be close here.

Thanks for the nice things you sent Roy.
He will be getting you a letter off this week.

I must get some more letters off, and it is very late,
so I will close for now.
I hope you and Aunt Maude are both well.
It must be a relief not to have to worry about the apartment house any more.
The children were all anxious about your garden.

With love,
Sara


Lice!  If you've ever had them, you will never forget
the shame, the itching, and the remedy.

My teacher discovered lice crawling through my hair 
during a head check in the fall of 1957.

We had recently moved to the small Acadian village
of Atholville in Northern New Brunswick
where I attended a Roman Catholic school.
One of my teacher's periodic duties
was to check every student's head for lice.
I was mortified when she found lice on mine.

My teacher was almost gleeful because she didn't like me.
I was Baptist and likely the only Protestant student in the school.
The principal notified my mother and quickly sent me home.

Worse than the shame were the intense itching
and the nightmarish thought of bloodsucking insects
creeping among the roots of my hair
and attaching their pale nits to the base of individual strands.

Before bedtime each night, my mother washed my hair and dried it vigorously.
Then she sprinkled my hair with a DDT powder, rubbed it into my scalp,
and began the time-consuming task of combing my hair
with a fine-toothed comb designed to comb out lice and eggs.

I remember sitting in the lamplight in the kitchen, my head over an enamel basin
as my mother repeatedly parted my hair, side to side and front to back, 
and meticulously combed each section of my hair.

She frequently rinsed the comb under the hot water tap,
dried it, and sprinkled more DDT powder on it.

She combed and combed for a long time,
until she couldn't find any more lice or nits.
They were almost microscopic in size,
but they looked huge and disgusting to me.

Every morning she combed my hair again and washed my bedding.
This went on for a good two weeks.

At least I wasn't alone in my humiliation.
My teacher routinely found someone with lice.




Imagine how shocked I was when I walked into my school
that first Thursday afternoon in June, 1961,
and my father grabbed me from behind in a big bear hug.
The nurse, Mike O'Flaherty, dusted my hair with DDT powder,
and Dad tousled it with gusto.
I can still hear my father's gleeful chortle and my classmates laughing.

When Mike and my father discussed treating
the Ojibwa children for lice, they decided
to include my brother, sisters, and me in the process.
They did not want the Ojibwa children
to feel discriminated against because they were Indians,
so they hatched a plan to ambush me
and make the delousing more of a game.

They treated my dubious brother, 
and everyone giggled at our grey hair.
Soon there were greyheads everywhere,
and clouds of dust filled the air
as the children rubbed their heads and shook their hair.

My father chased us all outside for an early recess,
opened the school doors to air out the classroom,
and joined Mike for a quick cup of coffee
in the nursing station across from the schoolyard.

My mother may be the person I admire the most,
but my father wasn't far behind.



Till next time ~
Fundy Blue



On the Shore of the Annapolis Basin
Smith's Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada
July 24, 2016
© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue
All Rights Reserved




Notes:  

1.  The Problem with Bertie:
     Bertie was late learning to walk; but once she found her legs, she was always on the go.
     Bertie loved to play outside in Lansdowne House; and by the spring, she could slip out the kitchen
     door when my mother's back was turned.  One morning my mother opened the door after
     hearing a knock to find a wet and muddy Bertie riding on the shoulders of an Ojibwa neighbor.
     He had found her sitting in a puddle on a path in the bush singing and washing her dolly.  When
     the MacMahons invited Bertie to play in their fenced in yard, it solved a big worry for my parents.



For Map Lovers Like Me: