My Mother always told me that she would never have got married to anyone if it had not been for Hitler and the Second World War.Luckily she decided to marry my Father or I would not be here writing this!
There is a lovely photograph of my parents, Nancie and Jack Huntingford, at the gate of their house, Fairford. They re-named it thus after they moved in, during the 1940s .In the photograph both of them are happily smiling behind the name on the gate. It was only many years later that I realised why they chose this name for their home, where they spent over 60 very happy years.
My Mother wrote her memoirs and left several diaries and many letters from which I have pieced together what is essentially her biography. It is a wonderful love story of two people and the friends they made on their journey through life. I would like to share it with you but first I have to go back in time to Nancie's  beginnings.

A Brave New World and a Family Tragedy

Nancie's parents, William and Mary Thomson, lived in adjoining farms in the Scottish village of  Kilmacolm, in Renfrewshire. William had gone to live with his Grandfather after the early death of both of his parents. He worked very hard on the farm , which was called West Kilbride. He helped first his Grandfather, Arthur Lang and then his uncle, also Arthur Lang to breed Clydesdale horses. Mary Holmes lived at Priestside Farm, nearby, where she helped to look after her brothers and sisters after the death of her Mother. The Doctor had warned Peter Holmes that having any more children could kill his wife, Margaret Rodger (nee Paul) but sadly she died, shortly after, giving birth to her tenth child.
Mary and William married in 1914 and sailed off on the Cassandra  to a new life in Canada where William hoped to farm and breed horses as before. They followed a Kilmacolm  friend of William's, called Dunlop and found a house in Vancouver City. William found work delivering milk for a dairy and soon Nancie, their first baby, arrived, followed swiftly by Nell and then Bill.
William may have found his new responsibilities stressful : a wife and three small children who had to be fed and clothes. His hard-earned savings began to dwindle and then, disaster struck. He suffered a brain haemorrhage and was hospitalised. With no income for several months, the nest egg disappeared and the only thing to do was to get the family home to Scotland.
Apparently the Freemasons, of which he was a member, made all the arrangements and William came home, paralysed from his stroke, in the autumn of 1916. Nancie was only four but she remembered the train journey from Vancouver to Montreal. Certain things stuck in her memory such as being helped up to the top bunk by the kindly  black train attendant. She told us that the noise of the wolves in the woods really frightened her.
William's brother, Arthur Thomson and his wife, Elizabeth (nee Carlisle) travelled from their home in Cleveland, Ohio, to see them onto The Pretorian, the boat that was to take them back to Scotland. The young couple had no children at that point and were so charmed by Nell, with her ringlets and smiling face that they wanted to keep her! No such offer was made for Nancie, who was a plainer child, with straight hair and, on photographs of the time, a permanent frown. Bill was a blonde, blue eyed baby at that time. Mary refused their kind offer but must have been very worried as to how she was going to cope.