EVELYN BLANCHE (MUNRO) CARTER

1886 – 1962

My mother as told by Hugh Munro Carter

Damn was forbidden. Darn was tolerated. Sweat was not used by nice people; Perspire and perspiration were quite proper. The use of such words as Hell, Sex, Prostitute, Rape, were a completely unknown factor.

These were some of my mother’s ingrained guidelines in bringing up four children. She had a large component of the Victorian puritan in her upbringing, and yet she was at the other end of the spectrum in many ways. She lived in the era when British mores were beginning to erode in the new country of Canada, and indeed around the world

Evelyn was born in London, Ontario to a Scottish immigrant and his English bride in 1886. It was a prosperous household in a new prospering economy. Her father, Sam Munro exulted in his success. He had one of the finest houses in London on Ridout Avenue, belonged to the Hunt Club, and travelled to Britain frequently to sell for his firm, and to bring back luxury gifts for the family. He had also been able to afford to bring his father and mother Christopher and Isabella Munro, and his sister from Inverness to settle in this new and wondrous country.

Evelyn enjoyed a comfortable childhood and upbringing in a happy family atmosphere. It is suspected that her father Sam was sometimes rambunctious and perhaps irascible, and that her mother Sophie was withdrawn, but in the heady atmosphere of burgeoning prosperous London this was inconsequential.

A mystery remains about Evelyn. She was part of a prosperous well connected family, whose home was the scene of many social gatherings, and who summered in the Muskokas. Evelyn won the tennis cup at school, and became a reasonably accomplished pianist. ( Her 21^st birthday present was a baby grand piano.) The mystery is why she remained single until she was thirty despite the appearance of being well balanced and talented.

At any rate, when she was about 28 she travelled to Calgary to visit her sister Florence, who had married George Clark whose company had transferred him to Calgary. There, she met my father Robert Stewart Carter, a businessman who had prospered and was about to enlist in the Canadian army. They became engaged.

She returned to London, he enlisted and was sent to Sarcee military camp near Calgary for officer training, was commissioned as a Lieutenant, and then travelled to London, Ontario to marry Evelyn. They married on August

12, 1916, and almost immediately he went to France with the army. She remained with her parents in London.

In those days an officer had many privileges. He was able to arrange for Evelyn to travel on a troopship to England. His commanding officer’s wife, Edith McMordie was also on board and they became good friends.

Evelyn remembered staying at a hotel in Purfleet (now part of Dockland, London, on the north bank of the Thames, downstream from central London). She sometimes reminisced about having to vacate the hotel and run down to the beach, and snuggle among the logs to avoid being a casualty of the bombs being dropped by German Zeppelins. (!)

When my father was demobilized in May 1919, he returned to Canada, picked up Evelyn and me in London and set out for Calgary. Three more children arrived: Evelyn (1920), Mac (1921), and Bob (1923) after which the family moved to Vancouver in 1925. I remember my mother as warm, loving, and lots of fun, who had a wide circle of friends, playing mah-jongg or bridge once or twice a week, in addition to bridge once or twice a week in the evenings with my father.

In our teens she was immensely popular with our friends because of her encouragement for them to use our home as a place to enjoy themselves. Many of them remember her joining bridge games and/or rolling the dice well into the early hours of the morning. She loved modest gambling, including betting on the horses through a “bookie” by telephone – strictly illegal in those days.

I can’t recall my mother ever expressing a strong opinion. This was undoubtedly due in part to her being to a large measure a Victorian wife where the husband was quite naturally master of the house.