M A C V A Y S I A

In 1943, when the Second World War was in full swing, Duncan MacLeod decided he was going to go and fight the Germans. He went to the local recruiting office with visions of charging into battle, but the recruiters had a different vision: before them was a short, scrawny young man who didn’t even look like he was old enough to carry a gun, let alone strong enough. And he wasn’t — old enough, that is. Duncan was only 15. He told them he was 18, but they just wouldn’t buy it. Get a letter confirming you’re really 18, they aid, and maybe you can go overseas. Duncan’s father was dead and his mother was dead set against the idea of her son going off to war, so there was no way he was going to get such a letter. He was out of luck. But he wasn’t out of options.

A friend told him that if he could get to Halifax, he could probably get on a convoy heading across the Atlantic and work his way across as a coal trimmer, which involved keeping piles of coal level in ships’ holds, feeding the coal into the engine, and helping to put out fires. When he got to England he could join the army; no one would be able to check his age over there. It sounded like a good plan, so Duncan sneaked onto a train bound for Halifax and steamed towards his destiny.

There were two things Duncan didn’t realize when he got on that train: that he had actually jumped onto a troop train, and that his mother had called the RCMP. The former he discovered when he noticed so many people wearing uniforms; the latter became apparent when he noticed RCMP officers getting onto the train at the Point Tupper ferry crossing.

The RCMP officers searched the entire train, but Duncan MacLeod was nowhere to be found. That’s because he had hustled off the train at the ferry crossing and hid in the bowels of the ferry itself, where a black man working in the boiler room gave him coffee and doughnuts. When the ferry reached the mainland side of the Canso Strait, Duncan slipped back onto the train and continued on towards Halifax.

As he hid in a dark corner on the train, Duncan thought he was going to make it. Even when a porter stumbled upon him, he thought he was going to make it. But soon after he heard the telltale click of a pistol; when he turned around he saw two Colt .44’s pointed at his head. At the other end of each was a military policeman. Duncan MacLeod’s war was over before it had even begun.

Duncan was handed over to police officers in New Glasgow, who chucked him into a holding cell because there was no judge in town to charge him with anything. In fact, the judge would have to make the trip from Antigonish, about 70 km away; since the judge wouldn’t be coming until the next day, Duncan MacLeod would have to spend the night in jail. Duncan spent the evening watching people walk past his barred cell window, which was right off the sidewalk of a busy downtown street.

The next day, Duncan was taken to the town courthouse, where he came face to face with a gruff-looking judge, who was undoubtedly not too pleased that he’d had to travel all the way from Antigonish just to deal with some young punk who’d been caught hitching a ride on a troop train. Sure enough, his voice was as gruff as his appearance.

“What’s your name, young man?”

“Duncan MacLeod.”

The judge made a face like he’d just chomped on a lemon. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, boy. I asked you a question and I expect a proper answer. What is your name?”

Duncan thought maybe the judge hadn’t heard him, so he said it louder this time. “My name’s Duncan MacLeod!”

“That’s my name!” bellowed the judge.

Duncan MacLeod was never charged with anything. The judge, Duncan MacLeod, asked him if he had any relatives in the area; Duncan said he had an uncle working in the Trenton steelworks, so the judge told him to go there, and released him. Duncan soon returned to his family in Sydney. By the time he was old enough to join the army, the war was over.

A young Duncan MacLeod.

The MacLeods would contribute to the war effort, however. Duncan’s uncle Robert, the youngest child of Angus and Jessie MacLeod, served as a member of the Cape Breton Highlanders. My grandfather told me Robert had been wounded on D-Day, but the Cape Breton Highlanders weren’t on Juno Beach that day, so Robert may have actually been wounded in Italy, where the Highlanders saw a lot of action at places like Ortona and Coriano Ridge. Anyway, as the story goes, an explosion blew Robert MacLeod’s clothes clean off and left him naked and pitch black from head to toe. He was taken back to England to recover, then went back into action.

Robert MacLeod survived the war and went back home to his family, who had other battles to fight — as did Duncan MacLeod. But those are stories for another day.

***

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on my research but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents
Hold Fast
Up Over the Mountain
Black Bears & Blueberries
The House Down the Road
The Blind Man’s Biscuits
Down by the Brook
The Still
The Dummy

For Duncan and Hughie MacLeod, summers in Glencoe weren’t all about play. One day they were sent to help old Mr. MacDonald down the road. The old man was part of a large family known locally as the Bornish MacDonalds, to distinguish them from all the other MacDonalds, who were (and still are) legion in Cape Breton. (There are lots of MacDonalds in my family tree. When I was a kid, there were 12 pages of MacDonalds in the phone book, and that was just my town.) The boys thought they were in for a fun day, because the old man was blind.

“Watch out!” said the MacGillivray boys, John and Hughie, as Duncan and Hughie were walking to the old man’s place. “Whatever you do, don’t eat his biscuits.”

“Why not?” asked Duncan.

“Because the old man chews tobacco all day,” said one of them, “and he spits it in his hands because he can’t see the pot. Those are the hands he makes the biscuits with. I’m telling you, don’t eat them!”

Duncan and Hughie were thoroughly disgusted by the very thought of biscuits mixed with spit and chewing tobacco. Their faces were still all knotted up when they arrived at the old man’s house.

“Co thusa?” asked the old man in Gaelic in response to Duncan’s knocking. He was looking out over their heads, until Duncan spoke.

“Duncan and Hughie MacLeod, sir. We’re…”

“Ah yes, yes. The MacLeod boys. You’re the ones who walked up the mountain at night. Hah! Isn’t that something? Come in!”

The boys weren’t surprised that the old man already knew about them. Not just because everyone in the area had already heard the story of their arrival, but also because the old man had what people called the second sight. People often went to him for advice on various matters. He was also the local authority on the genealogies of the various families in the area. When young couples wanted to marry, they’d go to him first, to see if they were related and, if they were, how closely.

The old man’s sons, Angus and Colin, weren’t around that day. My grandfather remembers Angus for his giant eyebrows, and Colin for the fact that he was constantly clearing his throat really loudly but never spit anything out. On this particular day, it was just Duncan, Hughie, and the old man.

The boys did some work out in the yard for the old man, and had a little fun with him too. “Oh, look at that beautiful buck out in the yard,” they said to him, describing in great detail a majestic animal that was in fact not there. The old man loved the boys’ description of the buck, and seemed to be buying it, even though they came close to cracking up with every detail they added.

Finally, after the boys had completed their work out in the yard and around the house, the old man called them inside and had them sit at the table. “Now,” he said, “let me give you something to eat.”

Duncan and Hughie shot each other the same look. “Oh no,” Duncan said, “we’re fine. Really, we should be go—”

“Oh go on,” said the old man. “Just a little something. Here, have some biscuits.”

There they were. Before Duncan and Hughie could say another word, there was a tray of tea biscuits on the table before them. The old man gave each boy a small plate and put two or three of the biscuits on each plate.

Hughie was sitting close to an open window, so he quickly tossed his biscuits outside. Duncan, at the other side of the table, was about to do the same, when the old man grabbed his hand.

“Oh, having another one are you? That’s a good boy.” Then he felt his way over to Hughie and ran his hands over the empty plate, and Hughie’s empty hands. “Gone already! Oh, you like my biscuits, do you? I made them myself!” He took another biscuit from the tray and put it into Hughie’s hand. “Here you go, have one more.”

With the old man standing over him, breathing on him, those brown, knotted hands mere inches away from his face, Hughie had no choice: he ate the biscuit. Duncan grimaced and looked away. He didn’t want to be next, so he put one biscuit into his pocket, and left the other one on the plate. When the old man came back and felt the plate, Duncan said, “I’m quite full. But your biscuits are delicious.” By this time, Hughie’s face was a disturbing shade of green.

The boys had only managed to get a few steps out of the yard when Hughie threw up. He was still wiping strings of puke-coloured vomit from his mouth when the boys came to the MacGillivrays’ house. The MacGillivray boys were out front, with their dog.

“Jesus, you ate the old man’s biscuits, didn’t you!”

“Hughie had to eat one,” Duncan laughed, “but not me.” With that, he pulled the biscuit out of his pocket and held it aloft. Hughie threw up again as Duncan examined the vile thing in his hand. Shaking his head, Duncan tossed the biscuit in the direction of the MacGillivray boys’ dog.

No sooner had the biscuit hit the ground than John MacGillivray lunged and kicked it away.

“Are you crazy?! he screamed. “Don’t give that to the dog!”

***

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on my research but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents
Hold Fast
Up Over the Mountain
Black Bears & Blueberries
The House Down the Road

My great-granduncle Dan MacLeod (whose real name was Donald Ignecious MacLeod) was born around 1892 in Upper Southwest Mabou, in the part of Cape Breton generally referred to as Glencoe. In the summer of 1937, my grandfather Duncan MacLeod and his younger brother Hughie were staying with Dan and his wife Maggie in their small house not far from where Angus and the other MacLeods lived. While they were staying up there, Duncan and Hughie had many experiences that would later become great stories. But some of the stories my grandfather passed on to me didn’t begin as experiences, but as stories themselves, told to the boys by their elders.

Dan MacLeod in his later years.

One such story that was told to my grandfather by his uncle Dan was about a young man who suddenly showed up at the MacLeod residence one morning. That was a fairly normal occurrence, except that in this particular case there had been a terrible blizzard the night before. Yet this young man didn’t look as if he had just spent the night battling the elements. The man didn’t speak Gaelic, so Dan spoke to him in English. “How did you survive that storm?” he asked the man.

“I was travelling through the area,” the young man said, “and that storm came up something wicked. Soon it was getting dark and I knew I’d have to find shelter. Thank God I came upon a house soon after that!”

“Oh,” said Dan, “that’s good then. You wouldn’t have lasted very long out in that storm. Whose house did you spend the night in?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t even know what their names were,” he said. “In fact, they said very little the whole time I was there. But they were fine people. They gave me something warm to eat and a cot to sleep on in the kitchen. When I woke up this morning I saw blue sky and knew I could continue on my way. I wanted to thank the old couple for their hospitality, but they were nowhere to be found. They must have gone out to do some work. So I left a five-dollar bill on the table and off I went.”

Dan was silent for a moment. Five dollars was a lot of money back then. But that wasn’t what was troubling him. He pointed at a window. “You came from that direction? Down that road over there?”

“That’s right,” said the man. “The house is down there. What are their names?”

“And you say they were an old couple?”

“Yes, quite old.”

Dan stared at the young man. After a long silence he asked, “Can you show me the house?”

“Of course,” said the young man.

So Dan MacLeod and his young visitor set out and slowly made their way down the road, taking exaggerated steps to get through the knee-deep snow. They had just settled into a decent pace when suddenly the young man came to a halt, a cloud of smoky breath partially masking his stunned expression.

“Oh my God!” he yelled. “Look what’s happened to it!” The house before them looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. Its old its roof had partially collapsed and had taken at least two walls with it. The young man hurled himself forward and began crawling, practically swimming, through the deep, untouched snow that threatened to swallow the house. He stopped in his tracks when he reached what was left of the wooden structure, and remained motionless for a long time, his back to Dan.

Dan had also been still for several moments, but then made his way towards the house as well. When he reached the young man he put a hand on his shoulder; the young man jerked yelped and almost toppled over into the snow.

“I…I don’t understand,” he said. “I stayed here last night. This house was…there were people here. I ate their food. I slept here! But…but look…it’s…”

“Abandoned,” said Dan. “This house has been abandoned for a few years now. There was an old couple living here, but they died a few years back.”

“No,” the young man said softly, shaking his head. “No, no, no. This can’t be right. This has to be a mistake!”

Dan was about to say something like “Let’s go” or “I’m sure you’re right,” but something in the ruined house caught his eye and clamped his mouth shut. He stumbled over a snow drift and ducked under the fallen roof, then walked in a half-crouch to what had once been the kitchen. There, atop the old table, was the thing he had seen waving in the light breeze: a crisp five-dollar bill.

Needless to say, the young man left the area as quickly as he could, and never came back.

***

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on my research but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents
Hold Fast
Up Over the Mountain
Black Bears & Blueberries

Not long after their walk up over River Denys Mountain, nine-year-old Duncan MacLeod and his eight-year-old brother Hughie went to church with their uncle Dan and the other MacLeods. Saint Margaret of Scotland Church in Glencoe had been completed in 1841 and had literally grown with the community: it had actually been split in half one year; the two halves had been pulled slightly apart, and a new section built in the middle. In 1937 the priest only came every two or three weeks, but the church was still the centre of a small but thriving Gaelic community. On Sunday mornings — especially when there was a priest in attendance — all the Catholics in Glencoe squeezed into the church.

Saint Margaret of Scotland Church on River Denys Mountain

On this particular Sunday, Duncan and Hughie MacLeod were celebrities. Everyone knew about their walk and their late-night arrival at Dan MacLeod’s house; those who hadn’t heard the story yet soon knew the details, as the priest made sure to tell the whole story to his flock. Children always sat in the small sections that served as a sort of upper floor, but Duncan and Hughie were allowed to sit on the ground floor with their aunts and uncles. They were the darlings of the district.

The interior of Saint Margaret of Scotland Church.

After the church service, as the boys stood outside listening to the strange, melodious Gaelic language being laughed into the light summer breeze, a lady turned to them and said in English, “Oh dear, what an adventure! Weren’t you afraid of all the bears?”

Duncan and Hughie looked at each other and the colour drained from their well-pinched cheeks. Bears?

The MacLeod boys were lucky they hadn’t encountered bears on their trek up the mountain, since the woods in that area were full of them. In fact, there were so many bears in the area, it was only a matter of time before they came across one.

Public-domain photo of an American black bear from Wikipedia.

One fine summer day — I don’t know if it was the first summer they spent up there or the second — Duncan and Hughie were sitting in a large blueberry barren that was practically right across the MacLeod Settlement Road from their grandparents’ house in Upper Southwest Mabou. They were happily stuffing themselves with blueberries when they looked up and saw a couple of black bears sitting at the opposite edge of the barren, also happily stuffing themselves with blueberries. The boys and the bears eyed one another for a few moments…then they all went back to happily stuffing themselves with blueberries, albeit with a cautious eye on the other diners.

On my first trip up to that area in 2001, I had reached a dead end and was slowly driving in reverse down a narrow, bumpy road near the brook just south of the old MacLeod homestead, when something black moved swiftly across the road behind me. I just managed to catch a glimpse of it, more a shadow than anything else, as it flitted out of my field of vision and disappeared into the dense forest. Leen saw the look on my face and asked what was wrong.

“I just saw something run into the woods,” I said.

“What was it? A deer?”

“No, it was black. I’m pretty sure it was a black bear. Papa told me these woods are full of bears.”

Leen’s face went ashen. Bears?

***

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on my research but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents
Hold Fast
Up Over the Mountain

I’m not a big fan of the Royal Malaysian Police. As far as I know, none of the police reports I’ve made since coming to Malaysia have resulted in anything resembling a thorough investigation; no one I’ve ever made a report against has ever been held accountable for whatever it was they had done. I’ve even had run-ins with the police myself: one off-duty officer nearly killed me when he acted as if a one-lane road had two lanes, then pulled me over when I gave him the finger; one time an officer who was directing traffic watched a motorcycle cut in front of me and run into me, then told the motorcyclist to continue on his way and told me he didn’t care about me or my car. Then there’s all the bribery. I don’t think I need to point out that Malaysian police officers will often take (and ask for) bribes. We’ve all seen it.

Yet I was glad to see news recently that officers of the Royal Malaysian Police will be getting a raise. Yes, believe it or not, I think they deserve more money. I think if Malaysian cops made more money, they might (and hopefully would) become more professional. Or, to put it another way: a pay raise would be one of just many steps the government could take towards making the Royal Malaysian Police a better police force.

The response to that statement is almost always the same: Even if they’re paid more, people told me, Malaysian cops will be corrupt. Do I really believe cops here would stop asking for bribes if they were paid more? No, I don’t. I understand it will take some time to eradicated corruption in the Royal Malaysian Police, because it’s deeply ingrained in the culture here and isn’t just caused by low pay. But I really do believe paying Malaysian cops more money will help. They’re currently getting what to me seems like the equivalent of what I made when I was working as a security guard on the Halifax waterfront. Except for one overzealous guard, who had a tricked-out utility belt and a badge and desperately wanted to be a cop but kept getting rejected, pretty much everyone who worked for that company did the barest minimum of work that was required of them. Why? Because they were all getting paid minimum wage. The boss paid them the least he was required to pay, so they all gave the least amount of effort (when I say they I mean we, of course). Even the wannabe cop finally cracked and was arrested for breaking into a shop on his watch and stealing clothes.

When I was working as a security guard back in those lean times, I didn’t think I was getting paid nearly enough to deal with drunks, shoplifters, panhandlers, and the occasional rowdy pub-goer. There was even an armed robbery once on the property I was guarding, but I wasn’t about to chase a guy with a gun. Not for the crap money I was making. That’s a job for real cops. They have weapons, they have training, and they have a sense of pride in what they do. Malaysian cops, it seems to me, have only two of those three things (and only barely so, I might add). They face the same dangers as cops back home — even worse dangers, I think, considering how much violent crime we have here — but they don’t even come close to displaying the same professionalism. It’s not a stretch to think their low salaries might have something to do with that. No, they wouldn’t all suddenly become better cops if they were paid more. But I really do think higher salaries would lead to a rise in professionalism, or would at least be part of any sincere effort to improve policing here.

My father with a new police car in 1978.

My father is a retired police officer. He served for over 20 years with the Sydney Police Department (now known as the Cape Breton Regional Police Services), first as a beat cop and then as a member of the ‘Ident’ section (basically, Dad was a CSI). My best buddy from high school is currently a member of the force. I thought about becoming a police officer myself, long ago, as did my brother. It’s a job people want to do, and one they’re proud to do. Cops back home make decent money. It’s not that they do their job well just because they’re paid good money. They’re paid good money because of the work they do, and because of what’s expected of them. There are lots of good police forces in Canada, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which to me seems as different from its Malaysian counterpart as day is from night.

The MacVay boys, Officers Mopey & Dopey.

Malaysia has a lot of cops who don’t do their jobs very well, but there must be cops here who do. Reward them. Make police work something Malaysians want to do, and something they can be proud of. Higher salaries constitute just one step, of course, in a series of steps required to make the police force better. It’s a start, though.

And while we’re at it, how about teachers? And nurses? I know, maybe what I’m suggesting isn’t 100% realistic. I mean, we’re not just talking about different police forces but different countries, different economies, different-sized middle classes, different styles of government (I’m having a good day so I won’t elaborate on that last one). But still, it would be nice.

On July 2nd, 1937, after school had finished for the summer, Susan MacLeod put her two eldest sons, nine-year-old Duncan and eight-year-old Hughie, on a train bound for Boisdale. The arrangement went something like this: they would spend a night with the Boisdale stationmaster, who lived above the station; the next day they would get back on the train and go to River Denys, where a man named Dan MacInnis would pick them up and take them to the home of their uncle, Donald Ignecious MacLeod — also known as Dan — on River Denys Road. Unfortunately for the MacLeod boys, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. I’m glad they didn’t, though, because what happened next is probably my favourite of all my grandfather’s stories.

Duncan and Hughie got off the train at Boisdale with a giant leather suitcase containing all their belongings, and slept above the station at the home of the stationmaster, as arranged by their mother and Uncle Dan. The next morning they got on another train and rode to River Denys Station. When they got off the train, there was no one there to meet them. They waited a while, then got hungry. So they went over to the local general store and bought orange pop and donuts. While they were outside enjoying their snack, an old man with a horse and wagon came by. Duncan asked him, “If someone was coming from River Denys Mountain, which way would they come from?” The old man told them the road up the mountain was just down the road and across the highway, near Melford.

“Come on,” said Duncan to his little brother. “I don’t want to wait here all day. Let’s start heading that way. Whoever’s coming to get us will see us on the road.” Reluctantly, Hughie agreed, and the boys started walking.

It was slow going with the big suitcase, which was not only heavy but very awkward because the handle was only big enough for one boy to grip at a time. The boys tried various ways of carrying the suitcase, but no matter what they did, it was cumbersome. And the journey was about to get even more difficult: after they crossed the main road at Melford and got onto River Denys Road, they began the ascent up River Denys Mountain.

It didn’t take long for the boys to get frustrated with the big suitcase. They couldn’t just leave it, since it contained pretty much everything they owned. But they couldn’t keep carrying it the way they were. That’s when Duncan got an idea. He found a large stick and put it through the handle, and he and Hughie each held one end. Now the going was much easier. But the road was getting steeper.

After some time they finally saw a house. Hughie was afraid to go near it, so Duncan walked up to the front door alone. The lady who answered the door was surprised to see a little boy standing there, especially one she didn’t recognize. Duncan introduced himself and pointed out Hughie, still standing next to the big suitcase down by the road. The lady said her husband, Mr. MacPhail, was the mail driver; when he returned home from his mail run, he could take the boys to their uncle’s house. Duncan went out to tell his little brother, but Hughie was still too afraid to go into the house. When Duncan told the lady they just wanted to continue on, she gave him some water, and some to give to Hughie. The boys had a drink and set out again.

Following directions the mail driver’s wife had given them, when they had reached a hairpin turn they left the main road. The road to Uncle Dan’s place was barely a road, just wagon ruts with a hump in the middle. To make matters worse, it was getting dark, and Hughie was getting scared. This was just the perfect time for the handle to break off the suitcase, sending the heavy bag to the ground with a thud. The boys jerked and teetered and then stayed very still. Duncan wouldn’t admit it to his little brother, but he was a little scared too.

In those moments of silence, their ears probing the woods for any sound that might signal the approach of friend or foe or ferocious animal, they heard a dog barking. That made Hughie even more afraid, but to Duncan it meant there might be a house nearby. Sure enough, off in the distance ahead of them, somewhere through the trees, there was a light. As the boys continued their climb and went around bends in the road, the light would blink out of view, then reappear. They were practically pushing the bag now instead of carrying it; in fact, they left the bag behind three times, thinking they’d go back for it later, only to change their minds and get it right away when they remembered it contained all their earthly possessions.

Finally they got close enough to the light that they could see a house. It was a small house, on a small hill. The dog was still barking, like it wanted to eat the boys whole. Hughie was terrified, but not Duncan. No, Duncan had been putting on a brave face for his brother, but he was more afraid of what might have been out in those ink-black woods than he was of a barking dog. Duncan walked right up to the dog, reached out a hand, and patted the dog on the head. The animal immediately stopped barking and followed Duncan to the steps of the house, and watched in silence as the little boy knock on the door.

Dan MacLeod was a little worried. Why hadn’t Dan MacInnis brought the boys over yet? He would have picked them up hours ago, and should have brought them right up. Were they going to spend the night at the MacInnis farm? That seemed like the most logical explanation. Anyway, Dan MacLeod had bigger things to worry about. One of his cows had just given birth to a calf, and he was afraid bears might come after it. The woods in that area were full of bears. Sure enough the dog, Tupper, had started barking late in the evening. So Dan had put a light on outside, hoping he’d be able to catch any predators that might decide to make a try for the calf. Tupper had barked for hours, but nothing had come into the yard, so Dan figured maybe the dog was doing a good job. Still, he couldn’t go to bed as long as Tupper was still barking. So he sat awake in his kitchen. Then he heard a knock at the side door.

When Dan opened the door, there was his nephew, Duncan MacLeod, standing out on the steps, with Tupper sitting next to him, and little Hughie standing at the edge of the yard, behind a big leather suitcase. It was quarter to two in the morning.

“Ios’, Ios’!” yelled Dan. (The boys would soon learn that Jesus in Gaelic was called Iosa.) “Maggie!” he bellowed, “Come quick!”

Soon the whole family was up and standing at the little side door. Dan’s sons, John Duncan and Angus, who were about the same ages as Duncan and Hughie, helped their city cousins lift the big suitcase into the small house. The MacLeod family stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, marveling at the fact that those two little boys had just walked up over River Denys Mountain. It’s not really much of a mountain, at only 200 metres high, but for two small children, dragging a huge suitcase, in the middle of the night no less, it was quite a feat. They had passed several houses, but because it was dark they hadn’t seen them. If not for the light Dan had left on to protect his calf from bears, they probably wouldn’t have seen his house, either.

The next day they learned that the Ford Model A belonging to Dan MacInnis had broken down. Somewhere along the line there had been a communication breakdown as well, and each Dan had ended up thinking the other Dan was going to pick the boys up at River Denys Station.

Thus began Duncan MacLeod’s summer on River Denys Mountain, just down the road from his grandfather’s house at MacLeod Settlement and the community of Glencoe. The people there would never forget the story of the two MacLeod boys who had walked up over the mountain. Duncan MacLeod would never forget it either, nor would he forget the experiences he had and the interesting characters he got to know during that first summer and the one after it.

But those are stories for another day.

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on information I dug up myself but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents
Hold Fast

The death of her husband at noon on the 2nd of June 1937 was a harsh blow to my great-grandmother, Susan MacLeod. But if she thought that day couldn’t possibly get any worse, she was wrong. After the funeral, Father MacGillivray showed up at the door of her small apartment on Intercolonial Street with two nuns and several large paper bags.

“We’ve come for the children,” he said. “They belong to the Church.”

The death of John Rory MacLeod meant Susan was left to care for not only the several children they’d had together, but also John R’s two children from his first marriage (though the elder of the two, Donald, was in his teens and just about ready to fend for himself) and Big Jim, the mentally-challenged brother of John R’s late first wife. To top it off, Susan was heavily pregnant. Suddenly she was left to care for a double-digit family all by herself.

They belong to the Church. The words reverberated in Susan’s head like heavy rocks thrown down a dry stone well. As she stood there trying to come to terms with what was happening, the two nuns went around the apartment stuffing whatever items of children’s clothing they could find into the paper bags. Big grocery bags, with handles. They belong to the Church.

Susan, daughter of a fishing boat captain from Fogo Island, Newfoundland, was Anglican like her father, and had never become Catholic. The Church had permitted John R to marry her, but she’d had to sign papers guaranteeing their children would be raised Catholic. Now that John R was gone, the Church wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.

They belong to the Church. The echo in Susan’s head finally faded from a deafening roar to a faint whisper. Not one to yell or make a scene, she quietly walked to the door of the apartment, opened it, turned to father MacGillivray and said, “Get out. Now.”

Father MacGillivray was about to put up a fight. How could she possibly ensure the children would be brought up as good Catholics? Would she actually take them to church? How did she expect to care for such a large family by herself anyway? How could she? How could she? Those children belonged to the Church!

“These are my children,” she said, her eyes fixed on his. “Now get out.”

Maybe it was the look in her eye. Maybe it was her stance. Maybe Father MacGillivray knew the motto of Clan MacLeod was ‘Hold Fast’. Whatever it was, he could tell she was serious. He walked past her and out through the door, followed closely behind by the two nuns, who still hadn’t spoken a word. Their brown paper bags, the big ones with the handles, were empty again. Before Susan could close the door, Father MacGillivray turned to face her.

“We’ll be back,” he said. He pointed at her round belly. “And we’ll be coming for that one too.”

He made good on that promise. Father MacGillivray and the two nuns came back on more than one occasion. Each time, Susan would send the children running off in every direction. Father MacGillivray never got any of them. Susan MacLeod held fast.

When Susan MacLeod gave birth to her youngest child, Jackie, mere weeks after her husband’s death, she knew she was in real trouble. She had managed to prevent the Church from taking her children away, but knew she couldn’t keep that up for long. Her relatives could help out, but they could only do so much. She needed help.

Susan’s brother-in-law, Donald Ignecious MacLeod, known to all as Dan, stepped in to help. He and his wife Maggie (the former Margaret Sarah MacDonnell) agreed to take Susan’s two eldest boys, Duncan and Hughie, for the summer.

Susan MacLeod struggled and suffered great hardship, with the family never far from excruciating poverty, and sometimes neck-deep in it. My granduncle Hugh MacLeod once said they were so poor that “on Christmas morning if you woke up without a hard-on you’d have nothing to play with.” But Susan raised her children. She held fast.

My great-grandmother, Susan MacLeod

Ironically, years later, she became Catholic. She never wavered from her determination to protect her children, though, right till the end. For Susan MacLeod, the end came on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1968. She was crossing Prince Street when she was hit by a drunk driver. The force of the impact killed her instantly and threw her from one corner to another. The driver of the car, a prominent local politician, was never punished.

The end of her life was tragic, just like that of her husband. But while she was alive she was not only a great mother to her children, but a shining example of quiet determination, of tenacity in the face of adversity. I’m glad Susan MacLeod held fast. And I’m glad she sent her two eldest sons, Duncan and Hughie, up to River Denys Mountain that summer after John R died. That was the start of an annual tradition of sorts, one which provided my grandfather — and me — with lots of great stories. In fact, the story of my grandfather’s first trip to that side of the island is one of my favourites.

But that’s a story for another day.

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on information I dug up myself but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

The Swans of Eigg
The Gardener’s Crossing
The Kilt
Crooked-Neck MacLean
One Eye, Two Guns, Three Tunes & Twenty-five Cents

My great-grandfather, John Rory MacLeod, was born in July 1889 in the area of Cape Breton island which contains the small communities of Glencoe and Upper Southwest Mabou. (There are several distinct places up there associated with my family, such as Glencoe Mills, MacLeod Settlement and Upper Southwest Mabou, but my grandfather always refers to them collectively as Glencoe.) The island had seen several waves of immigrants over the years, mostly Scots. But in the early 20th century, long after the last ships full of Highland settlers had arrived on its shores, Cape Breton began to see more and more outmigration, as men from the island went off in search of work elsewhere.

Some only went as far as the island’s industrial western edge, to work at the newly-built steel mill or in the coal mines. Some went down to what they called “the Boston states”. Others went to work as lumbermen in New Brunswick. Many went further west to Ontario, a province whose mines and factories would claim the lives of two of John R’s brothers in 1928: John ‘Mor’ (Big John, who died in Windsor) and Duncan (who died in Cochrane, about an hour’s drive from Timmins). John R worked in many of those places; from New Brunswick’s forests, he ventured up into the Yukon, where he worked in mines and searched for gold. The great Klondike gold rush had long since ended, but there was still gold to be found and fortunes to be made, and the Yukon was still a very rough-and-tumble place. According to my grandfather, John R carried a revolver on each hip during his time up north.

Fortune eluded John R, however, and he returned to Cape Breton, where on 12 April 1915 he married Mary Gillis, daughter of farmers Archibald and Mary Ann Gillis of Grand Mira. John R and Mary began having children (a son named Donald and a daughter named Jessie) and John R did his best to make a living. He briefly worked as a fireman, but he was fired when his superiors learned he was blind in one eye. I’m not sure if he was born that way, or if he was injured during his time working away from the island. I suppose the reason didn’t matter at the time. John R was out of a job. Lucky for him, the Dominion Iron and Steel Company was always looking for labourers.

Life had more tests for John R, though. Only a few years into his marriage, his wife Mary died of cancer, leaving him to care for his son, his daughter, and his mentally-challenged brother-in-law, Big Jim. John R soon married again, this time to Susan Powell, from the small island of Fogo, Newfoundland, daughter of Eliza Leyte and a fishing boat captain named Nathaniel Powell. John R and Susan welcomed their first child together on 22 November 1927 in the house they lived in on Townsend Street. It was a boy; they named him Duncan.

John Rory MacLeod

Duncan MacLeod, my grandfather, has happy memories of his father. He told me he had to read the Saturday morning paper to his father because John R was illiterate. Duncan — Papa — would even read the little speech balloons as he and his father looked at the comics. Papa told me his father had a fiddle and claimed to know three tunes, though he only ever played one, Red Wing (here’s a video of someone playing that tune).

Something else Papa remembers about John R is that he and Susan never fought, never argued at all. Papa only ever saw his mother, a very quiet person, get angry at his father once. It was just after a blizzard, and John R left the house to make the long, difficult walk to the steel plant to shovel snow. He’d been gone a long time but suddenly reappeared at the door. When Susan asked him what he was doing home, he said he’d got halfway to work when a drunk asked him for money; he didn’t have any so he’d come home to get a quarter. That was the only time Duncan MacLeod ever saw his mother get angry at his father.

John R and Susan had several more children and, though every extra mouth to feed meant life would be more difficult, they were happy. But at the beginning of June, 1937, all that came to an end. John R was walking home from work on June 1st when a truck carrying a full load of hot slag (the stuff left over when coal is burnt) lost control and crashed, dumping its contents right on top of him. He suffered horrific burns from the waist down and was rushed to the hospital. His boss sent someone to his home (at the time the MacLeods were living in a 2nd-floor apartment on Intercolonial Street) to tell Susan that John R had had a “little accident”. Susan was told there was no need to go to the hospital. The next morning, however, Father MacGillivray came to see Susan and told her she needed to go to the hospital right away.

When Susan got to the hospital she was told she could talk to her husband but couldn’t look behind the curtain that was draped between them. So she sat and talked with John R, who asked her if the children were okay. “Make sure the boys are in by seven,” he said to her. Then he died, just as the church bells were ringing at noon. John Rory MacLeod was just shy of his 48th birthday.

Life was hard while John R was alive; now that he was gone, Susan and her children were about to find out just how hard it could be. But that’s a story for another day.

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod is a series of posts on my MacLeod ancestors. Some are based on information I dug up myself but most are stories told to me by my grandfather, Duncan MacLeod. Here are the other posts in the series:

Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod: The Swans of Eigg
Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod: The Gardener’s Crossing
Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod: The Kilt
Chronicles of Duncan MacLeod: Crooked-Neck MacLean

A few pages into Alistair MacLeod’s 1976 short story The Closing Down of Summer there’s a brief description of moonshine the main characters were drinking on a beach on the west coast of Cape Breton:

It is the purest of moonshine made by our relatives back in the hills and is impossible to buy. It comes to us only as a gift or in exchange for long-past favours: bringing home of bodies, small loans of forgotten dollars, kindnesses to now-dead grandmothers. It is as clear as water, and a teaspoonful of it when touched by a match will burn with the low blue flame of a votive candle until it is completely consumed, leaving the teaspoon hot and totally dry.

Knowing that much of what Alistair MacLeod writes about is based on his life and his people, it’s not much of a stretch to think that those moonshine-making “relatives back in the hills” were his distant cousins in Glencoe/Upper Southwest Mabou, who also bore the name MacLeod. Alistair MacLeod is a descendant of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Duncan MacLeod, whom I wrote about last May. One of Duncan’s sons, Donald, was Alistair’s ancestor; another, John, was my great-great-great-great-grandfather. As mentioned in another post, John’s son Duncan migrated to Cape Breton in 1843; Duncan’s son Angus, my great-great-grandfather, became the patriarch of a large family in Glencoe/Upper Southwest Mabou after his father’s death.

But why would I assume the relatives mentioned in Alistair MacLeod’s story were my relatives? Well, because my MacLeod relatives weren’t just Alistair MacLeod’s kin. They also happened to be the makers of some of the finest moonshine on that side of the island.

Angus MacLeod’s sons would go into the woods at a certain time every year to make their moonshine. They had quite an operation going, and were able to keep it safe from the long arm of the law year after year.There was one year, however, in which a close call almost ended not only in the discovery of their still, but also could have ended in tragedy.

One year — I don’t know exactly when — the RCMP came dangerously close to finding the MacLeod boys’ moonshine operation in the woods. According to my grandfather, an RCMP officer named Malcolm MacLean was chasing my great-granduncle Alec MacLeod somewhere in the woods when Alec, who always carried a pistol, turned to fire a warning shot. Instead his bullet hit MacLean in the neck, seriously wounding him. MacLean survived but was left with a permanent disability, which earned him the nickname Crooked-Neck MacLean. Worse still, he never got a look at the face of the man he’d been chasing, so he could never pin the shooting on Alec, even though everyone in the area knew it was Alec who’d done it. Alec spent the rest of his life feeling guilty over what he’d done, but also relieved that he hadn’t killed MacLean. He also felt quite relieved, as did the rest of the family, that the MacLeods’ moonshine operation could carry on for a little while longer. Alec died in 1977.

My grandfather told me quite a bit about his relatives from up in those hills. But those are stories for another day.

As I’ve been interested in history and genealogy for many years now, I’ve often found myself wishing I had a time machine, to see places as they once were and meet the people who contributed to my eventual existence. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Well, what if I told you I could do it?

I was talking about family history with my grandmother the other day. It was her 80th birthday, so I made sure to call her. Nana usually confines herself to her room, but on that day she’d sat herself near the phone to field numerous calls from family and friends. She was having a great day; better, she said, than the deafening silence that usually fills the house. So while we were talking, we got onto the topic of genealogy. I told her she was related to Celine Dion, Madonna, and Camilla Parker-Bowles (all her tenth cousins, once removed), which surprised her and made her cackle (yes, she cackles). I also asked her about things she remembered that I didn’t know, things that birth records, marriage records, death records, cemetery inscriptions and census transcriptions can’t tell me. I know a lot about my ancestors, but the further back I go the less I know about who they really were. It’s difficult sometimes to imagine these people from way back as anything more than names and dates. But they were more. Anyway, Nana told me a bit about her childhood.

My grandmother, Mary Theresa (Martell) MacLeod, at age 17. The baby is my uncle Brian.

One anecdote that I found interesting was about Nana’s visits to her father’s birthplace. My grandmother, Mary Theresa Martell, is the eldest daughter of Wallace Abraham Martell and Mary Jessie MacDougall, both long gone. I remember them from my childhood, though, and called them Papa and Mama (which sounded like Puppa and Mumma). Papa Martell was from a French-speaking family on Isle Madame; Mama Martell came from a Gaelic-speaking family that was based up in Judique Intervale and Port Hastings (and later Sydney). As each had a different native tongue that the other didn’t speak, Papa and Mama Martell spoke only English to each other, and when they had children English was the only language of the home. Nana didn’t grow up speaking either French or Gaelic, but she does remember hearing both languages spoken, especially when she and her parents would go to visit relatives outside of Sydney.

Nana remembers going with her parents to visit her father’s relatives in Poulamon and Petit-de-Grat when she was six years old, which would have been in 1936. I believe it was summer. She remembers finding the place a bit strange, like a different country. The people were very conservative and somewhat old-fashioned; the women all covered their hair, and the men all wore hats as well. Both sides of her family were Catholic, but her father’s family seemed very different from her mother’s people, who were more boisterous and never said anything that didn’t come out riding on a laugh or a song. Even when the MacDougalls spoke Gaelic there was a familiarity about them that comforted young Mary Theresa Martell. But the Martells, though not really that far from the industrial center of the island, were in a world of their own.

While her father was in the house speaking French with his relatives, little Mary Theresa was outside playing. Back in those days, if the weather was nice, the kids would be booted out of the house in the morning and wouldn’t be expected back inside until suppertime. Mary Theresa was relieved to be out of the strange world of strict adults who dressed like people from books and spoke a slurring language she didn’t understand. She could play outside, a cool breeze off the water picking up her little light-coloured hair as she skipped around the yard, playing in her own little world, where everyone was happy. Not that the Martells weren’t happy, but to a six-year-old used to a less-restrained atmosphere, they seemed rather serious.

But she wasn’t alone in that little world of sin-kissed flowers and gentle sea breezes. Her cousin, I think her name was Phyllis, about the same age, would spend the entire day out there with her. There was only one swing hanging from one of the big trees in the yard, so the girls had to share. They played together for the whole day, making a little world together.

“It was funny,” Nana said to me over the phone. “She didn’t speak a word of English, and I didn’t speak any French. But we played together all day. We’d be put outside together like that every time I went there, and we always played together. We shared the swing, played games. We didn’t understand each other but it wasn’t a problem at all. We just played all day.”

When she was telling me that story, I was there, in that yard, on that summer day in 1936, watching two little girls playing on a swing. Maybe you were there too, just now. See? That’s time travel.

When you see old photographs, you travel back in time. You look upon a person or a place as they once were. It’s amazing. But when you talk to someone who can tell you about a time when you hadn’t yet been born, or even when your parents hadn’t yet been born, well now that’s real time travel. Old photographs can show you how something looked, but nothing beats a first-hand account for its ability to show you how something sounded, smelled, felt. Stories of yesteryear aren’t always accurate, especially if they’re stories someone got from someone else. But they’re all glimpses into another world. The genealogical research I’ve done over the years would be nothing but a skeleton without all the stories and information I’ve gotten from elderly relatives. Even if you’re not into genealogy, I think you should talk to the oldest members of your family, listen to the stories they have to tell. You might end up with stories you want to pass on to those who come after you. Even if you don’t, at least you can tell people you’ve traveled through time.

As a Canadian living in Malaysia, I find it interesting whenever I find some connection between the my country of my birth and the place I now call home. That is, I find it interesting when two seemingly separate aspects of my life intersect beyond the boundaries of my little family, like one time when I watched a Canadian and Malaysian driver battling for position in an A1 race (let’s face it, you usually don’t see Malaysia and Canada competing against each other in pretty much anything). It reminds me of my wedding, when people who were in my life but not one another’s lives were suddenly sitting together at one table. It was like a comic starring both Batman and Spiderman. It was interesting.

I got that feeling again (and more) today when my friend Tariq alerted me to a National Film Board of Canada documentary from 1999 called Unwanted Soldiers. It tells the story of a group of young Chinese-Canadian men who lived in a society in which they couldn’t vote, get decent jobs, or even safely leave Chinatown. When the Second World War came along, they discovered to their great frustration that they couldn’t even get accepted into the army to fight for their country. However, when the Japanese occupied what was then called Malaya, the British hatched a plan to drop soldiers into the Malayan jungles to arm and train the guerrillas; the natural choice was to find Chinese-speaking soldiers who could blend in. That’s when they got the Canadian army to open the doors to Chinese recruits, several of whom were taken to an island off BC and trained in commando tactics. The soldiers were then dropped into the Malayan jungle and remained there until August 1945, when the Japanese finally surrendered.

Who knew there was such a fascinating Canadian connection to such a tumultuous period in Malaysian history? I certainly didn’t.

Of course, the story doesn’t end in 1945. There’s more to this documentary than just war. The fighting these men did in the jungle was nothing compared to their fight for dignity. The documentary is almost an hour long, but it’s worth it. Do take a look.

Sure, it’s not Remembrance Day anymore, but it doesn’t have to be, does it? As fellow Cape Bretoner and blogger Kate Beaton writes:

Remembrance Day always makes me ruminative about the place of history in our current consciences, because it is one of the few holidays where we are explicitly told listen you have to remember this thing that happened ok and, one, people pay attention, two, there is nothing jamming the line like bbq’s or parties or football games or chocolate eggs or presents. History: You should give a shit, who knew.

Anyway, watch the documentary if you have time. It’s a truly moving Canadian story, with a bit of Malaysian spice.