During the war, a lot of British airmen and support troops came to Canada for training where it was comparitively safe. It was the custom for kindly older people to open their homes to 'Our Boys' who wanted a family-atmosphere holiday when On Leave.

Uncle Bill and Aunt Lucy Thompson in my home town (Niagara Penninsula) didn't have any kids of their own, but were Uncle and Aunt to most of the town. They took in young airmen from all over and provided Wholesome Entertainment, like picnics and tea dances. Uncle Bill and Aunt Lucy were Methodists so started off by inviting the Nice Methodist Girls of Good Families to these occasions but, by mid war, this lot was pretty much paired up with the Thompson's guests, so Uncle Bill and Aunt Lucy extended the net to the Nice Presbyterian Girls of Good Families ... of which my mother was one.

I have a few sketchy details of some of the Boys she met this way including some from Australia, but we'll let that be ...

So, at some point during the war, he who would become my dad - a Welsh farm boy and electrical apprentice - was sent out as Ground Crew to various RAF training installations in Canada, including Letherbridge, Alta. and Trenton, Ont. At Trenton, he saw Uncle Bill and Aunt Lucy's note on the bulletin board and arranged to go and stay with them and met my mum.

The rest is not, yet, history.

Dad, at some point in his travels, had met some woman who made superb lemon meringue pie. He asked her for the recipe and kept it in his wallet. (I remember seeing it in my childhood; I think it's disappeared now...) He swore that if he could ever find a young lady who could make it right, he'd marry her.

Mum could. He did.

A post script: Lemon meringue pie from scratch can be a messy and time consuming business which mum never really enjoyed. When we were little, Sherriff's came out with an instant pie filling which she decided to try ... without telling dad. She used it for years before he actually found out.

It was only fairly recently that mother let slip a few details about other boyfriends she had had. Which was a shock to my system as I'd never considered this possibility before! One was the son of a fruit farm owner near Niagara on the Lake, and thus Very Well Off. But his name was Pickins Kerr. How could a fruit family be so horrible as to call a son 'Pickins'???? Anyway, I guess she dumped him when he kinda bragged that he didn't have to go to war 'cause he was exempt; a sore point with her as she had several brothers and a sister in the Services at the time ...

Don't know how my Grandparents met (on either side) but I know that my Welsh grandfather's mother didn't approve of her daughter in law for some strange reason and so Nain (grandma, in North Walian) wasn't allowed to move onto the farm for the first few years!

One set of my mother's great grandparents met on the ship from Penzance. He was a tailor and was emmigrating; she was going to meet her fiancee in Montreal. They were married before they made land.

Every life is a story!

siân