Little Britannia Bay in Ottawa, Ont. is almost a mythical area, hidden away from the hustle and bustle of a large city, from political scandals and depressing headline news, from crime and torment, from people in a rush with somewhere to be.
It's a quaint little village with neatly cut lawns, giant plump maple trees, freshly painted picket fences, people saying hello to each other on the street with friendly smiles and the distant murmur of the bay in the background.
It's romantic. It's quiet.
It hasn't aged in years, stuck in its own time capsule of tranquility and ease, dating back to the early 20th century when its beach was the popular city hang-out spot, with streetcars bringing crowds of city dwellers, armed with beach towels and striped umbrellas to its welcoming boardwalk, jam packed with street vendors.
It was where my grandmother ("Gram") Elizabeth "Betty" Blyth grew up.
It was where Gram met and fell in love with Earl Piche.
They were both kids - only 20 years old when they got married in 1942.
"Do you ever think your love for Earl was just youthful puppy love?" I had the nerve to ask her one day, sitting at her kitchen table in Ottawa.
She shot me a look.
"Never. If Earl was alive today, we'd still be happily married and more in love than ever," she said emphatically.
My Gram was the catch of Britannia Bay: hourglass figure, leggy, long, shiny brown hair like Ava Gardner, bright blue eyes. She had it all. She was funny as heck, impossibly nice and generous almost to a fault. Her friends adored her and the young men of Britannia were dreaming of dating her.
It didn't matter.
She only had eyes for Earl Piche, and he her.
Earl was as handsome as they come - dark wavy hair and a movie-star face.
But that wasn't what attracted Gram to him.
"He was such a romantic," she would fondly recall, gazing off into her memories of him. "More romantic and sincere than any other man I ever met. I just adored him," she once said to me.
Britannia's golden couple began dating as teenagers and were married a few years later. My father, Earl Piche Jr. was born in 1942, their only child together, the fruition of their mad love for each other.
They were living in Toronto at the time, where Earl was training with the Algonquin Regiment for the infantry in the Second World War, but soon moved back to their beloved Britannia village when Earl had a break in training.
Knowing that he'd soon have to go back to Toronto for final training before being sent overseas during the conflict, Earl wanted Gram to be near their families to help out with baby Earl.
They missed each other terribly when Earl was away, as evidenced by the stacks of love letters they sent to each other, that Gram used to show me all the time when I was young and that I now as a grown woman have in a trinket box in my house.
"Caitie, come upstairs. I have some things I want to show you," she'd whisper to me.
She always kept her voice low so Grandpa Bill McRae, the man gram married a couple of years after Earl's passing and who, even after 60 years of marriage, knew in his heart of hearts he always played second fiddle to Earl Piche, wouldn't hear.
Gram didn't want to hurt his feelings. She loved Bill.
But as the only Piche offspring of Gram's grandchildren living in Ottawa, she knew it was special for me to learn of my dad's birth father, a war hero and Gram's soul mate.
She'd rummage through the back of the closet in the guest bedroom, before finally pulling out a small box that she had covered up with clothes and other boxes of things.
In it were letters, trinkets, jewelry, her wedding ring to Earl, his dog tags, a book of poems he wrote for her, all that rival Percy Shelley and Lord Byron at the peak of their writing careers.
When he was on leave, he'd quickly rush home on the five-hour train to Britannia to visit his wife and baby son, she'd tell me.
"Do you remember anything of your dad?" I asked my father once.
He thought about it for a second.
"I remember the smell of his aftershave, when he'd lean over in my crib to kiss me," my dad recalled.
"And I have this vague recollection of him tossing me up and down in the air, but that's it. I don't remember his laughter or his smile. If I heard a recording of his voice, I wouldn't know it was him," my dad, always an open and thoughtful person, explained.
I could tell it still, as a 67-year-old man, crushed him.
There are many photos of my father with Earl Piche; Earl stroking his son's soft blonde hair and snuggling up to each other; Earl laughing as my infant father, who was learning how to walk, was trying to push his own baby carriage; Earl sitting with his son and the family dog, Mokie.
Earl holding my dad proudly, a giant wide smile beaming from ear to ear.
The numerous photos of Earl and Gram, the two locked in a passionate embrace, or walking hand in hand through Britannia's vast fields. Earl pretending to be funny and making silly faces or jokingly flexing, my gram rolling her eyes and chuckling.
But most of them are of the two gazing into each other's eyes, forever young and in love.
When Earl was finally deployed overseas in Germany, their letters to each other only got more emotional and heart-felt:
I know it now that love is true
It binds the pledge I made with you
It keeps us one and offers prayer
In silent solitude everywhere
And oh beloved, while still tis nite
Reach forth your heart and hear me say
You're mine, my own, this dusk till lite
Till comes the dawn of that other day
For you my little darling.
I love you terribly and always will
Xoxoxo
Earl
"We'd spend every waking second together anytime we could," Gram used to recall. "We were mad for each other."
"Was it hard when he went to war?" I once asked, as a young, naïve little girl.
"Very," Gram said, her voice breaking. I saw tears well up in her eyes, something I had never seen of my outgoing, jovial grandmother.
"It was awful."
Earl continued to write as often as he could, letters detailing the daily happenings of his regiment in war-torn Germany; the anguish of losing friends and comrades, of seeing their limbs blown off, lying on the ground crying out in an indescribable agony so loud it's almost silent.
He was young.
Sometimes he couldn't take it.
He longed to be back with his wife and son in little Britannia, asking Gram to continue sharing stories on what was going on in her life, on how baby Earl was doing.
For a year, Earl sent letters to his beloved Betty, the final one dated April 9, 1945:
Dearest little Betty,
Here I am again darling and feeling fine. I received the box of fudge from you today and it sure was swell, the fellows all thought so also. You really know how to make it Bett, and I also received a bunch of mail I got, one from Mrs. Bushbui and one from Junior and one from Muriel, Mona and Gordie [his siblings] and mom and a lot from you, hon.
So I have loads to answer now and I don't know how I will ever find the time, however I will do my best; the one from Junior was quite old, written in January sometime. He was telling me the parcel you sent him was the nicest he ever received since he came overseas. I hope he has got all the letters I wrote to him by now.
How are you feeling now, hon? Did the doc know what was causing your headache? Maybe it would do you good if he gave you medicine to take, so if he does, don't forget and take it all. I know how you hate taking anything like that.
Well we are back in Germany again and it is so warm and sunny today I could fall asleep and sleep forever but I have to write you first every chance I get Bett. I will write even if there isn't much to say.
I'm sure it won't last long darling, so be brave and pretty soon now I and all the others will be home.
We had a chap killed this morning and just across the road from where I am sitting they are burying him now. The padre just finished saying the sermon; God, it's so sad. I remember the time pop died and seeing these things brings back the memories. They have found a nice spot for him though and have a white cross with his rank, name and no. on it and R.I.P. for Rest In Peace. They give the fellows as nice a funeral as possible but it will be so wonderful to be home again and to get away from the feeling that around each corner, someone wants to take a shot at you, and to get away from all this killing and be amongst friends again, if only it would hurry up.
Mom was saying the roads were all clear now at home and on Sunday there was quite a crowd of people walking up and down. I guess by the time you receive this letter, all of it will be gone.
I would love to be home now. I like the spring also and I miss the walks we used to take up the tracks and up to the cemetery and down to the rapids to watch the ice coming down but most of all, I miss you darling, so very much. I suppose that's no news though, aye. I've missed you for so long now, it's about time I start getting used to being with you again.
You were wondering which letters came the quickest, well I think it's a waste to send airmail now cause the ordinary ones come just as fast. Nearly all the mail is flown over now.
So you were trying on your new nighties again were you? Oh I'm sure hon I will love you in them and I'll squeeze you to pieces, if you aren't too fat now (haha! Only joking!)
I'm glad you and Jean didn't go to Montreal, Betty. What in the name of Pete did she ever want to go there for of all places? It's nice and all for a couple to spend a weekend but two girls, you could have gotten [letter is faded here]..but it's a pretty nice city and so you and I will go down for a weekend sometime and I will show you the place where I worked and where I stayed. Sure we will go places honey and see a bit of Canada aye.
Well pet, I guess I will close again for now so keep well darling and remember I love you always, so until again bye bye and God bless you and Garrie [my father's nickname growing up was Gary/Garrie] always.
Xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Yours alone forever,
Your own,
Earl
xoxoxoxo
Earl Piche was killed in action two days later, riding atop a tank in a heavy assault on the town of Breddenburg in northwest Germany, when a sniper's bullet struck him in the neck. The Germans surrendered only days later.
He was 23 years old.
I've decided to let my father, the late, great journalist Earl McRae, recall the moments when my grandmother found out her beloved one and only, Earl Piche, had been killed in action. This is an excerpt from an e-mail my father sent to me when we were talking back and forth about the horrors of war:
When my father was killed, Gram found out when a telegram boy on a bike came to the little flower store in Britannia village where she was working, and asked for her. When she saw him at the front, and knew he was delivering a telegram, she knew right away that it was to tell her that her husband, Earl, had been killed in action. She knew for sure when she saw on the envelope of the telegram three red stars. Three red stars meant that it was the worst of news, that it was a "We are sorry to inform you..." and that it signified Killed In Action.
Gram was too shattered to open the telegram at the store. Mr. Warren, the owner, phoned Gram's brother, Uncle Ross, who worked in downtown Ottawa as a ticket agent for the CPR.
Uncle Ross, who was 24, took the streetcar right away to Britannia, and took Gram, who was only 22, home to the old brick house on Violet Street where Gram lived with her mom and dad, and me. Uncle Ross put his arm around Gram's waist and held her close as they walked from the store and along the path through the field of milkweeds to Violet Street.
Gram had fallen apart. At the house, Uncle Ross opened and read the telegram to gram. Gram cried out, and collapsed to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. It was a terrible, terrible day for her, just as it would have been for the wife of any Canadian soldier just killed.
I'll never know how Gram got through it. I don't think I could. Even as an older woman in her late 70s, when she'd talk about Earl, her voice softening, there was always a sudden, heavy sadness. It still pained her, an irreconcilable hole in her heart that would never be repaired.
He was her everything - the man of her dreams, her adoring husband, father of her firstborn. And she lost him.
Gram went on to remarry of course and had five more children and a 60-year marriage with my Grandpa Bill, an upstanding, gentle man and math teacher. And when grandkids eventually came along, there was nothing that made Gram happier, especially being able to show us all her photos.
She and grandpa lived only a few blocks away from my house in Ottawa, so growing up, we'd pop by all the time for a visit.
Gram had her own archives of photographs, filling up the sideboard in her dining room, popping out of drawers in side tables, cascading along the walls of her house in neat frames, meticulously kept in photo albums on the coffee table. They were just as much a part of her as they were of the frames that displayed them.
"If there's ever a fire, I'm going back in and saving my pictures," she used to say.
They were precious to her, all those photos.
Especially the ones that were kept upstairs, neatly tucked away in a worn, satin box at the back of the guest bedroom closet, beneath clothes and other boxes, the ones that she'd go through in private when no one else was around.
Those photos of Earl Piche.
