On the left is a typical "homestead adobe-type cabin." I believe Joyce's father started out in Collingwood as an accountant but later went west to be a "homesteader." It was one hard life but they survived until the great "Dust Bowl" and the Depression Days in the thirties. Joyce herself was born in Saskatchewan at Dewar Lake way out in the prairie country. We went there in the nineties as she wanted to see where she was born but I do not remember seeing anything of a lake there! At this time I can't find any good pictures of Joyce's Mom and Dad but as we go through them, maybe I'll find some better ones later. The lady on the right is Joyce's Mom on her 80th birthday, taken on 10th October, 1968. She passed away about a year later. Five years earlier she and her husband, Charles were coming out of Shelburne in their car and were hit head-on at the intersection of Highway 10 and 24 at Shelburne, Ontario and she suffered a broken back. Charlie was cut up a bit and badly shaken up. The idiot OPP Officer charged my father-in-law with all kinds ridiculous charges when in reality he should have charged the guy that hit them as he was on the wrong side of the road that night when he struck them! Typical. A good friend of mine, Assistant Attorney General at the time, represented Charlie and the judge threw the whole bloody mess out for lack of one wit of evidence that Charlie had broken the law! I took great pleasure in having his Corporal transferred to Horne Payne, "waaaaaay" up north for his tardiness in not advising his Officer properly! The Officer was literally "reamed out" by the judge right in the courtroom.
About a month after that case, my father-in-law simply "switched off" one night while he was sleeping. I know that the idiotic charges against him were what brought about his untimely end and although I am an ex-Policeman, mainly because of this I have since been ever vigilant of any Policeman that does not represent his Office properly. I will do whatever I possibly can to see he/she is disciplined for any discrepancy or dereliction of their duty. All this nonsense took place while my mother-in-law was laying in hospital with a broken back and the Police let the guy that did it go scott free!
As I said above, the pictures I have found thus far of Joyce's Mom and Dad are really not the best quality. They are old and very small poorly taken snapshots taken by who knows. I touched them up as best I could in PhotoShop but I cannot make a fuzzy out-of-focus picture a clear one no matter what I do. I might add here that when Joyce's Mom passed away, she left the home in Honeywood to her and we rented it for many years to a nice elderly English couple who had retired over there and came to Canada to be near their children. They had it for sixteen years.
In 1987 we retired and moved up here. I had never intended to live in this damn "snow-belt" but we got a good carpenter in and he worked for eighteen months just re-doing the whole house over. I insisted that it keep its original character but as it was stucco (I hate that stuff) we had it sort of re-designed a bit, replaced all the plumbing, re-installed all the wiring with up-to-date electric service panels, took out the smelly old oil furnace and installed an electric one. New tri-thermal windows, insulation throughout completely (it only had a thin layer of insulation in the attic all that time!) and Bob's your uncle! It's home now! Guess what though? The good Lord still dumps His share of that white stuff on us. Hell ... I thought He would make a special concession because we moved up here but He didn't! Oh well ... can't have it all.
Well I finally found some very old portraits of Joyce's folks. That's Joyce's Mom on the left, the former Annie Hunt and her Dad, Charles Copeland next to her. The portrait of Annie was done (probably around the turn of the century) by "Barrett Studios" 327 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the portrait of Charles was done by "A. S. Webb", Collingwood, Ontario, Canada. Notice that both of them used the "oval" image area which seemed to be very popular at the time. They were both mounted on quite heavy, stiff sort of pressed cardboard material ... all black background. The portraits I mentioned on another page of my Grandparents, although large were also in the "oval" format. Both of these needed cleaning up with my PhotoShop due to their age alone. More than likely the damage came from how they were stored as they were a bit stained and some of the spots had to be removed. It's a funny thing .... it seems when your parents are alive and well, we have a tendency to sort of "humour them" as they get more demanding of our time. It does become fairly irritating at times and we think we are always justified by "putting them off". However ... AFTER THEY ARE GONE ... we then realize what an important part of our lives they really were! I am as guilty as the next guy because I always figured my parents were too demanding of our time and I often put them off. Now I understand ('cause I'm the one now "old") but at the same time, I realize that this is part of life. In with the "new" and out with the "old" I guess one should say..jpg)
I may get the sequence of these pictures mixed up time-wise but there are so many of them and unless Joyce is sitting right next to me all the time to help me sort out who is who, I'm kind of lost. The picture on the left has Joyce's Mom, Annie left front, Joyce to her left, Maurice (the eldest) to Joyce's left (in Army uniform), Delmar directly behind Maurice and Elliot on the step above and between Joyce and her mother. They were farming back in Ontario about twelve miles north of Shelburne, Ontario, Canada. The picture on the right is (from left to right) Joyce, Elliot, Delmar and Maurice. Whether it was intentional or not they are arranged with the youngest on the left to the oldest on the right. (looking at the picture) This was obviously during WW2 and Joyce was about 15 at the time. Maurice was injured overseas and was really never the same from then on. He went off on his own right after the war, worked mainly on the docks in Toronto Harbour as a stevedore and "checker" but for some reason was an "easy mark" for "leach-type" friends. Consequently he was always short of money as he would literally "give his shirt away" to anyone with the best "sob story." He did "imbibe" somewhat more than he should and then he started to have a great deal of trouble with his feet .... so much so that after considerable surgery and stays in hospitals we realized he would not be able to look after himself as he was now in a wheelchair.