The biography of a homeboy from England who made it good in smalltown Canada
Introduction
I opened the large and somewhat heavy brown box with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. I had already been forewarned about what I would find inside. The box held the diaries and collected memories of Charlie Baker, a transplanted Englishman who had spent almost his entire adult life working for local farmers in and around his adopted village of Belmont before his death on Good Friday, April 2nd, 1999 at the age of 89.
Some people go through life without leaving anything behind, while others leave lasting impressions on everyone. Charlie Baker was one of those rare people who both left a lasting impression and a lot of very tangible evidence of his time on this earth.
Charlie's recordings, mundane as they might seem at first glance, on closer inspection are really a fascinating look at Belmont's early days, both on its farms and in the village itself.
Having spent one very boring year of my early life recording my own daily happenings in a diary and never wanting to do it again, I can only marvel at how Charlie could keep doing it for so long. One can only speculate as to why he did keep such meticulous records, perhaps at the suggestion of his mother back in England whom he never saw again after he came to Canada as a Home Boy in January 1927.
Though Charlie does not consciously reveal much of himself in his notes, we can quickly see his lifelong love for hockey and other sports, and though far from his roots, that he was a staunch royalist. And though Charlie was an avid reader of anything and everything, spelling was never his strong point.
Because of his efforts, his legacy will live on within the pages of his carefully recorded diaries and record books which will be preserved in the historical archives section of the Belmont Library where Charlie spent so many happy hours.
During research for this book, a lot of input was received from Charlie's friends and acquaintances who had memories to share.
While to some people Charlie appeared a simple man, in more ways than one, it was well known that he was friendly and outgoing with everyone he met and had a heart of gold. He did, however, have strong opinions which did get him in trouble occasionally.
One, a member of the former Over 50 Club, remembered Charlie firmly believing that Cpl. John McCrae, the author of In Flanders Fields, was an Englishman. When told that he was a Canadian, Charlie rushed home to consult his encyclopaedias to confirm or disprove it. Finding that McCrae was indeed a Canadian, Charlie went back to the club and insisted that he be allowed to read the poem during their Remembrance Day program. He was told this would not be possible because someone else had already been chosen to read it.
Charlie was no more perfect than anyone else, and was known to have a bad temper. One hairdresser found out about it the hard way when Charlie showed up early for his haircutting appointment and insisted on being served next, although he could see the hairdresser was very busy at the time. When the hairdresser refused to serve him next, Charlie verbally lost his temper and was told to leave and never come back.
While nothing was recorded by Charlie during the war years, one village resident remembered his father, who still lives in Ripley where Charlie spent his early years in Canada, saying that, at the end of the war, Charlie burned a picture of Hitler.
Also unrecorded by Charlie was the full story of his first meeting with the bell from his beloved former church, St. George's Anglican Church, in a junkyard where it had ended up after the church had been torn down. The story was related by Audrey Jenkins, the wife of Harold Jenkins, who had found it, told Charlie, and then took him to get it. When Charlie saw the bell again, he got down on his knees and kissed it.
As he grew older and his friends began to pass on, Charlie did not always chose his new ones wisely. One friendship in particular, which occurred after he stopped writing his diaries, fortunately did not last as long as his others did. His new friend was of decidedly questionable character, and going to church together on several occasions resulted in Charlie being told not to ever bring his friend back.
I only knew Charlie for a brief moment in time, but while I did, I cherished our friendship.
Excerpt
A Thumbnail Sketch
Charlie Baker was born Charles Smith Baker in Brighton, England on October 30th, 1909. He came to Canada when he was 17, leaving England by ship on January 7th, 1927 and arriving here on the 18th.
"It was a rough crossing all the way," he said of the experience, still fresh in his mind many years later when he celebrated turning 85 in 1994. "We ran out of fresh water because it took so long."
Nothing much is known of Charlie's early life in England other than why he never married and remained, as he put it, in the state of singlehood. As he explained it years later, "I promised my mother that I would."
He went on to say that they used to give soldiers tots of rum and once, when his father came home reeling of rum, he chased Charlie and his mother out of the house with a hatchet. After being rescued by neighbours, Charlie solemnly promised his mother he would never marry because he didn't want to turn out like his dad.
What became of his father is not known. It is known that, though Charlie tried his best to help his mother, in the end she was forced to put him in a child refuge and never saw him again. In none of his notebooks or diaries is there ever any mention of a family back in England, and when an insurance policy is listed in his expense statement for 1949-51, he records his beneficiary as "Estate". Eventually, a combination bible and biblical encyclopaedia would come to light clearing up the mystery of what became of
his mother. In the family record section, in Charlie's own handwriting is recorded simply his own name and birth date and that of his beloved mother Sarah Payne (or Pane) Baker who was born on July 23rd, 1872. In it he wrote that she had died on Dec. 19th, 1939 at the age of 67 and was buried in Hove on Dec. 28th.
In the early stages of the completion of the research on this book, it was suggested by Charlie's minister, Rev. Gloria Langlois, that he might have been a Barnardo Home Boy sent here to work on the farms. After the completion of the reading of his diaries, the bible and several important papers were found among his possessions which had been in the care of one of his friends. Among the papers were a certificate of completion from the Bisley Boys School, part of the Shaftesbury Homes & Arethusa, in 1914 and a letter inviting him to a reunion in 1939. A letter of enquiry to the Barnardo Homes Aftercare failed to produce any records of Charlie being a Barnardo Home Boy.
A letter to the Shaftesbury Homes Head Office, however, confirmed that Charlie had indeed been a Shaftesbury Home Boy, though there were no longer any records in England to verify it due to a fire at their Head Office in 1950 destroying most of their archives. They said that the information sent to them confirmed that Charlie had been "transported to Canada with the best of intentions and without thought of the long term consequences."
During his lifetime Charlie amassed an amazing amount of information which he recorded in diaries, notebooks and even on calendar pages. Curiously, though Charlie arrived in Canada on January 18th, 1927, according to the notebooks and diaries in his
box (which I'd put in chronological order before deciphering), he didn't begin diarizing or note taking until 1933 while he worked on a farm in Ripley, Ontario. He continued faithfully recording everything that interested him up until 1936 when he suddenly stopped and didn't begin again until just before he left Ripley for Belmont in 1945.
One wonders, though, what happened to Charlie during the missing years between 1936 and 1945, as it is known he did not serve in the war, and whether there really were notebooks that were somehow lost (as were temporarily two he'd written during the 1980s).
Charlie arrived in Belmont on August 20th, 1945 to officially work for Don and Etta Willsie. He would remain here for 53 years, over that time helping out at various other farms in the area wherever needed as well as helping do the lawns of local residents and maintaining St. George's Anglican Church until it was shut down in 1971 and later demolished. After he retired in 1976, he rented rooms in homes in the village before he finally got a place of his very own when he became the first resident of Belmont's Bel Parc Seniors Apartments and later its Treasurer when the building opened in 1980. He lived there until February 1998 when declining health due to strokes necessitated his transfer to the Caressant Care nursing facility in St. Thomas. Though he had looked forward to seeing 90 and the year 2000, Charlie didn't make either one. He died in the spring of 1999 just six months short of his 90th birthday.
Here, then, are the highlights of Charlie's diaries and notebooks which he faithfully recorded in from 1933-1936 and 1945-1988.
This book has been eight years in the making. It is mostly a jumble of thoughts written down in old spiral notebooks and hidden in the bottom drawer underneath various manuals for software packages and hardware long since turned obsolete.
Margaret Kohel Evans invites her mother's grandchildren to a delightful visit with their grandmother, sharing charming memories of her across eighteen life themes.
