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

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.

In Part One I told the story of my ancestors’ Irish origins, and about my particular branch of the family’s journey from Ireland to Scotland, back to Ireland, then back to Scotland again before they finally moved to Canada. Part Two covered the family’s departure from New Brunswick and their early years on Cape Breton. Now it’s time for Part Three, a rundown of life for my MacVays from the death of my great-grandparents till the passing of my grandparents.

Francis Reginald MacVay, known to family and friends as Frank, grew up in Sydney, along with his brother Ralph, who was actually his nephew. By the time Frank was 20, his brothers were all gone (Robert had died; Alexander, Kirk and Ralph had all moved to the US). William and Fanny moved out of the family home at 115 George Street so they could be cared for by their daughter Maude; Frank stayed at 115 George.

Sometime in 1934 or 1935, Frank married Muriel Alice Davison, daughter of Robert Davison and Christina MacKenzie. Muriel’s father’s side of the family consisted mainly of a number of Cape Breton County families: the Davisons came from New Brunswick and settled in the area between Ball’s Creek and Point Edward, where they became connected to Beatons, Dicksons and Grants, among others (the Beatons and Grants may have been descendants of soldiers from the Black Watch who spent time in Sydney; the Dicksons moved to the area from Main-a-Dieu). Muriel’s mother, Christina MacKenzie, was from North River Bridge, in Victoria County, where her family was related to the MacRaes (Christina’s mother was a MacRae), MacLeods and MacLennans.

Frank and Muriel’s first child, William Henion MacVay (I think Henion was the family name of some close friends of Frank and Muriel), was born on 18 April 1936. Two years later they had a daughter named Edna. Then along came the Second World War.

Frank, probably unaware that he was sort of following in the footsteps of his physician ancestors (well, if we’re actually descended from those people anyway), joined the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps and was stationed in England. You might think being in a non-combat role that far from the front lines would have been a pretty sweet deal compared to where he could have been sent. But from 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, those pesky Nazis dropped a lot of bombs on Britain, killing over 43,000 civilians in a campaign that became known as the Blitz. There were many military casualties as well, which included Canadian military personnel. During one particularly nasty night of bombing, Corporal Frank R. MacVay was riding a motorcycle in London. It was standard practice to keep as many lights out as possible so the Germans couldn’t see what they were bombing. If riding a motorcycle with no headlight in the middle of London at night with the only light coming from exploding bombs and anti-aircraft fire sounds dangerous, well apparently it was. Cpl. MacVay crashed and badly injured a leg. He was being wheeled into an operating room to have the mangled leg amputated when a doctor who knew him saw him and took over, to see if he could save the leg. To do so he did something that even today sounds pretty amazing to me: he took tendons from a pig and put them in Frank’s leg (I’m told it was a first of sorts, and that it ended up being written up in a medical journal). Frank’s leg was saved, but his tour of duty was over.

Frank returned home and got a job with Metropolitan Life. That job didn’t seem to suit him very well; going door-to-door selling life insurance left him with a fear of dogs that would be difficult for him to overcome. So when he got an opportunity to work for the city government, he jumped at it. At some point Maude sold the family home and Frank moved into a house around the corner on Amelia Street; later he bought a little house at 59 Atlantic Street. In 1948 Frank and Muriel carried on another family tradition of sorts: having children well after having children was thought to have been over with. In January 1948, ten years after the birth of his closest sibling, my father was born.

Life was good for Frank and his family. Frank moved up through the ranks of the municipal government; he had a wife, three great kids, a house…a pretty good life by most standards. There was trouble beneath the shiny exterior of the family’s life, however: Frank MacVay was an alcoholic. There doesn’t appear to have been any particular event or set of circumstances that led to his alcoholism. He simply got carried away with the drinking, and at some point he became an alcoholic. But he didn’t stay that way for the rest of his life. he managed to kick the habit in 1954. But barely two months later, he would face a traumatic event that some feared would drive him back to the bottle.

It was 1954 and Frank’s eldest son William, known as Billy, to family and friends, was swimming with my aunt Edna and her friend Heather at Lake Ainslie. The kids were jumping from a floating platform on the lake (another version of the story is that they were horsing around in a canoe); Frank was on the shore. For some reason, Billy didn’t return to the surface after jumping in the water. Frank, who couldn’t swim, could only jump up and down on the shore and scream his lungs out. Billy’s body wasn’t found until several days later.

Despite the sadness caused by that traumatic day, Frank stayed sober. In fact, he became very active in Alcoholics Anonymous and served as a ’sponsor’ to new members for several years. His success in kicking the habit seems admirable, inspiring even. But in the end, he was nonetheless done in by his urges, and his inability to know when to quit. It had nothing to do with drinking, though. Rather, it was hunting that proved to be his Achilles’ heel.

It was October 1970, and Frank (now the city’s Deputy Clerk) had just bought a new pick-up. Muriel reluctantly accompanied him to Blues Mills on the west side of the island, where his buddies were raving about a giant buck and doe that had been spotted in the woods somewhere. Frank took his rifle and went to have a look. The RCMP were called in when he didn’t return. He was found lying in a gravel pit in Blues Mills, with his arms folded over his chest and his rifle by his side. It turns out he’d probably got that big buck in his sights, but when he went to shoot it his heart exploded. Thinking he could still save himself, he took a nitroglycerine capsule he kept in a little locket around his neck, then lay back to wait for it to take effect. But when your heart has just exploded, nothing is going to help. Frank was only 62 years old.

It was bad enough Muriel had just lost her husband, but she soon discovered she had lost his army pension as well. It took almost a year of lobbying by the local Member of Parliament before the Department of Veterans Affairs caved in and gave Muriel the pension, back-dated to the day he died. Muriel spent her remaining years in the family home on Atlantic Street, where for some reason she collected newspapers and tin cans. She died in 1977, also of heart disease, which she’d inherited from her mother (Christina Davison had died of a heart attack at the age of 61, exactly a week after a heart attack claimed the life of her 64-year-old brother, Neil A. MacKenzie).

Muriel died during my lifetime but I don’t really remember her. My only real memory of her may not be a real memory at all. Maybe I just saw a photo of it once and now I think it’s a memory. We were all at my aunt Edna’s house. I was riding on the back of Edna’s black Labrador retriever, Jet. Muriel was watching from a chair in the corner. That’s all I remember.

It’s a real shame I never got to know Frank and Muriel. Aside from the obvious reasons for someone wanting to know their grandparents, there’s the purely genealogical interest, in that they could have told me a lot of things I don’t know about our family.

Of course, the story of my family doesn’t end with the passing of my paternal grandparents. In fact, the story’s just getting started. Wait till I get to my mother’s side of the family.

As I mentioned in Part One, my great-grandparents, William and Fanny MacVay, had several children. The first, Robert Franklin MacVay, was born barely nine months after their marriage. Next came Alexander MacVay, Alice Maude MacVay, Elizabeth Armour MacVay, and finally William Kirk MacVay. All were born in New Brunswick except Kirk, who was born in the US, probably in Grand Lake Stream, Maine, where the MacArtneys had moved just before Fanny’s marriage to William.

It seems to have been fairly common in those times and those parts for people’s first and middle names to be interchangeable. Robert and Alexander were known by their first names (most people knew them as Robbie and Sandy, respectively), but the other three MacVay children were almost always called by their middle names: Maude, Armour and Kirk. However, I have to admit I don’t actually know which names were their middle names, because the names were used interchangeably to such an extent that I’ve seen both combinations of each name in pretty much equal numbers, even in official records. Like I said, though, it seems they went by the names Maude, Armour (the family name of William MacVay’s mother) and Kirk.

Life for the MacVay family in New Brunswick was good. But at the turn of the 20th century the family got an opportunity for an even better life: A steel mill known as the Dominion Iron and Steel Company had just been built in the town of Sydney, on Cape Breton Island in the neighbouring province of Nova Scotia. William’s masonry skills would be in constant demand at the new steel plant, whereas in New Brunswick Joseph’s lumber skills were more bankable. In 1901 the MacVays left Little Ridge and moved to Sydney.

For the first couple of years in Sydney the MacVays lived in a house on Falmouth Street not far from the waterfront. William worked as a bricklayer at the steel plant; Robbie and Sandy worked there as well. On 21 May 1903, William paid James and Suzannah Burchell a dollar for a 41-by-100-foot plot on the land known as Louisa Gardens in the city’s north end, took out a mortgage and built a house. It was a large house, perfect for a large family. William even added a personal touch: a fireplace that he crafted himself. The fireplace is still there; the house is now a ‘bed and breakfast’ and still looks beautiful.

The MacVay family home, 115 George St., Sydney NS

The fireplace William MacVay made for his home in Sydney

My family’s first few years in Nova Scotia were happy. The men of the family, William and his two eldest sons, had good jobs at the steel plant. Every morning they would dress in their finest suits, walk to work, change into their work clothes, spend the day in what was surely a filthy environment, then clean themselves up, put their nice suits back on, and walk home.

When he wasn’t working, William was practising masonry, but not the kind he did at work: he was a member of the Freemasons and eventually became quite prominent in the local lodge, where I’ve been told his picture still hangs.

William was proud of his Scottish heritage and did his best to hold onto what he perceived as his Scottish culture. An elderly relative who knew him told me once that he played the bagpipes and even occasionally “danced the swords“. Still, he was very reserved and preferred to express his fondness for his culture behind closed doors. Young Kirk, however, was less reserved; William often scolded him for doing the Highland Fling on street corners.

The MacVays circa 1904. Back row, left to right: Armour, William and Maude. Front row: Robert, Frances, Kirk and Alexander.

William’s reserved manner could probably be attributed to the fact that, like most Ulster Scots, he was a staunch Presbyterian. He often reminded his children that they were forbidden from marrying anyone who wasn’t also Presbyterian. Only a couple of his children stuck to the rules. Religion, however, would be the least of his worries in the years to come.

Robert, after spending his early years in rural New Brunswick, was now living in a nice house and had a good job. Not only that, he had something else to celebrate: he had met the love of his life, Bessie Randall Higgs, daughter of Thomas and Susan Higgs of Bayfield, Antigonish County. Robert and Bessie got married on 24 October 1906 by an Anglican minister. Soon they would have their first child and William and Fanny’s first grandchild. However, while giving birth to her son Ralph Higgs MacVay in Buffalo, New York, Bessie died. Robert was devastated and blamed Ralph for Bessie’s death. He refused to have anything to do with his son, forcing his parents, William and Fanny, to care for the child.

William was in his 60s at that time; Fanny was in her 40s. It had been a decade since the birth of their youngest child. People say that couples who spend a lot of time around babies can get pregnant more easily. I’m not so sure, but I do know of at least two examples of this happening: when Leen got pregnant we were helping our friend Azlin take care of her son Faaris in China; and not long after the birth of her first grandchild, Fanny MacVay got pregnant. When she was 45 years old she gave birth to her sixth child, Francis Reginald MacVay. Frank, as Francis was known, was almost the same age as his only nephew, so the two would be raised as brothers.

For Robert, things only went from bad to worse. Already devastated by his wife’s death and suffering from depression, he contracted tuberculosis and began to deteriorate physically as well as emotionally. His family sent him to Colorado, where it was believed the high altitude might improve his condition. But he had already given up on life and his condition continued to worsen. When it became apparent her son was not long for the world, Fanny boarded a train for Colorado and took Robert home so he could spend his few remaining days with his family. When he saw his son for the first time in almost two years, he felt great remorse for having blamed him for his wife’s death. He spent his last days getting to know Ralph, then died in the early hours of 25 October 1909. His sister Maude would later say he had died of a broken heart.

Robert’s brother Alexander, known to family and friends as Sandy, had his own problems. As a result of a terrible accident at the steel plant, Sandy had a steel plate put in his head; it seems he was never the same after that. While still a young man he left his parents’ home and headed west, drifting from place to place. He ended up in Seattle, Washington, where he married twice. He and his first wife, Katherine, had a daughter named Barbara. Sandy died in Seattle on 19 September 1952, leaving a widow named Bertha, a stepson, and his daughter, who married a police officer and became Barbara Cook. In the early 90s she and her husband drove across North America and visited my father, her first cousin.

The elder MacVay daughter, Maude, stayed in Sydney and married William L. Totten, whose family owned a construction company. Will and Maude lived down the street at number 47 (maybe it was 41), where they would spend the rest of their lives. They never had any children, perhaps because Maude was very stern and conservative (I’m told she went into the closet to change her clothes; the fact that she and will had no children may have resulted from the fact that he hardly ever got anywhere near her). Maude died on 22 may 1955.

I think this photo was taken in the late 1920s. From left to right: William, Frances, Maude, and my grandfather, Frank. I think the guy in the car is Maude's husband, Will Totten.

Armour married Ambrose Higgs, brother of Robert’s wife Bessie, and they had five daughters. They moved out west, to Hythe, Alberta, but Ambrose left Armour to fend for herself and her five girls. Armour became a Jehovah’s Witness shortly after that (it was probably Jehovah’s Witnesses who cared for her when she was abandoned by Ambrose). I tracked down one of those daughters, Olive, through her mother’s 1964 obituary. Olive was an invaluable source of information on the MacVay family and was able to give me precious firsthand accounts of the lives of people I had only known from photos and old documents. If I recall correctly, it was Olive who put me in touch with our cousin Joe Flewelling in New Brunswick, another great source of information and anecdotes.

Kirk MacVay, like his brother Sandy, left Cape Breton Island after high school and moved to the US. He ended up working in a coal mine somewhere in Pennsylvania, where he was killed in an explosion in the late 1920s or early 1930s. At least that’s one version of the story. According to my aunt Edna, Maude and Will told her Kirk had been killed in an explosion while welding an oil tank somewhere in the western US, maybe Oklahoma (if that’s true, he wouldn’t be the only person with a family name like ours to blow something up in Oklahama). His story remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of my family history. As far as I know, he never married or had children, though Edna says he married and had a couple of kids. That presents an intriguing possibility: that there could be more MacVays out there to whom we’re somewhat closely related.

Ralph MacVay, the grandson that William and Fanny raised as a son, also moved to the US in his teens (having been born in Buffalo, he was an American citizen and moved there before reaching the age of majority so he could retain his citizenship). He spent many years in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he worked in the boys’ wear department at MacArtney’s, the shop owned by his uncle (actually his granduncle), Fanny’s brother Robert MacArtney. Ralph was married to a woman named Anne; she died and he remarried, but never had any children. I think he spent his retirement years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

William MacVay worked as a foreman bricklayer at the steel plant until he was 81 or 82 years old, when failing health forced him to retire. He moved in with Maude and Will at 41 George Street, where he died on 19 June 1932 at the age of 88 (though it could have been 87, since I’m not 100% certain what year he was born). Fanny also died at Maude’s house, on 26 June 1935, at the relatively young age of 72, apparently of breast cancer. According to her obituary, the First United Church choir sang two of her favourite songs at her funeral, Nearer My God to Thee and Come to the Saviour.

So what about Frank? For his story you’ll have to wait for Part Three.