Our traumatic departure from Canada

We thought that when we checked into a motel near Montreal that would be the end of our drive across Canada. The plan had been to get to Montreal, have a day to explore the city and then get on board the RMS Carmania along with our worldly goods and cross the Atlantic to our new life in England. The distance we had driven was about 2,400 miles.

At the start of our journey Dad was confident that driving across most of Canada was not going to be too difficult. Afterall, there had been coverage on the news that the Trans Canada highway was now complete and linked Halifax in Nova Scotia to Vancouver in British Columbia with a continuous ribbon of tarmac. At Calgary my Dad picked up the signs for the new highway and headed east. By now I was fast asleep, but any dreams Dad had of that ribbon of tarmac were rudely interrupted.

Apparently our car was stopped by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) patrol. They asked where we were going and Dad in his usual droll way told them “Southampton in England”. The officers explained that the section of the highway Dad had hoped to have found was nothing more than a gravel road with white marker stones and that if he carried on in his current direction, we would be crossing the border with America. They escorted us back to the highway such as it was and as far as a motel where we spent our first night on the great migration.

My middle brother, Brian, had been a bit sulky for the whole journey. At each stop he would take himself off somewhere away from my parents and my elder brother David. His best friend for the journey was a small transistor radio which he would listen to through an ear piece.

As we were getting ready to go to bed Brian burst into the room where I was with my parents. He had been listening to the radio and had heard on the local news that there was a dock strike starting that night at the docks near Montreal. No ships would be arriving or leaving for the duration of it. My parents knew that Brian had not been enthusiastic about the migration and tried to brush his announcement off as a plot to cancel it. Mum and Dad switched on the TV and waited for some news which when it came confirmed what Brian had said.

The next morning Dad checked with the shipping agents. They confirmed that the RMS Carmania would not be sailing from Montreal the next afternoon but was going to depart from Quebec the day after. Another 171 miles on the road loomed ahead of us, another night in a motel and high hopes that the strike would not have spread along the St Lawrence River.

We boarded on the morning of departure and watched from the deck of the ship as the packing cases Dad had made were lifted into the hold. Pallets had not been invented in 1963 so the boxes were held in what could best be described as a huge string shopping bag. The family car followed. Dad’s heart stopped when the crane operator realised it was too long to fit through the hatch horizontally. So, he tipped it at a precarious angle before lowering it into the hold. The packing cases and the car were probably the last things to be loaded before the trauma started to unfold.

It wasn’t the realisation that when the ship left Quebec that our family was emigrating from Canada to Britain that was traumatic.

It was when we saw that the stevedores had gathered as a mob at the end of the gangway and were refusing to help an elderly lady trundle her trunk through them and on to the gangway. They had declared a strike in support of their “brothers” in Montreal.

A few of the crew gathered on the gangway. One even stepped on to the dock to help her. He was set upon by the angry stevedores and pulled back to safety by his mates. The elderly lady did make it to the foot of the gangway and along with her trunk was, through lack of choices, inelegantly manhandled on to it and into safety by the crew.

She was the last passenger to board.

The stevedores, fuelled by drink, then got violent, started ripping up chunks of tarmac and throwing them. My parents took us to our cabins on the opposite side of the ship. We all sat together.

While we were sitting together in our cabin, A15, the glasses on the shelf tinkled and we all felt the ship make a gentle lurch. I remember looking out of the porthole into the night and seeing the lights on the far side of the river start moving.

The deck we had stood on minutes before was covered with shards of glass and tarmac. The stevedores had been accurate with their throwing but ineffective in preventing the RMS Carmania leaving for Southampton and taking us on our great migration.