Boreal

Merry Christmas Mother. You Did Good!

From an Email to my British Columbia Siblings

In Hearst we had the best of a bad situation. Those of us who made the initial journey to British Columbia inherited the worst of a bad situation. In Hearst, what made a bad situation better was our father’s love of fishing, and the respect he had for his oldest son.

In B. C., father did not rediscover his love of fishing and the son who could influence his behaviour had stayed behind. Sundays were now just another excuse for him to get drunk. Albert was now the oldest brother at home. It was now incumbent upon him to protect mom, as bizarre as that sounds.

He put an end to the threats once for all one Sunday afternoon by not backing down from a confrontation during which he could have lost his life. I was not inside the house at the time therefore this is not a first-hand account. Father turned on him. He ran out of the house with the old man in pursuit. He found a two-by-four on the ground and hit him in the leg hoping to slow him down. It only made him angrier. Albert ran into street. Father got behind the wheel of our large Plymouth Fury and tried to run him down.

To my knowledge, and I should know, during our remaining time in Ashcroft, father never again threatened mom. I would like think that it was Albert’s willingness to physically confront him that made him think twice.

In my discussions with Albert, when Lucette and I visited with him and Madeleine in Kelowna, his recollections of events sometimes differed from mine. This could be the case here. I don’t care!

Albert was the one who stepped in and took care of the business when mother suffered another heart attack and required hospitalization.

While hospitalize the old man, from what why I remember, was not longer getting paid for helping open the store in the morning. Mooney he used to buy booze. Miners and cowboys who use to see him at the bar may have taken pity on mother and left her silver dollars and some other valuable silver currency when she worked the till. While she was in the hospital the old man found her collection of valuable silver coins and drank it. I felt her pain when she told me it was all gone.

To avoid another heart attack that could kill her and to be near a larger hospital if one occurred, we would have to move and find a less demanding business that would still allow her to provide for her family. That is when we sold the Red & White supermarket, moved to Kamloops and bought a laundromat, a business mother could easily manage on her own, if necessary. Of course, that did not solve the problem of a husband with a serious drinking problem that brought on psychotic episodes.

At mother’s funeral I felt, and I think Albert did to, that we had failed our mother, that she would still be alive if we had killed the old man when we had the chance. That was certainly my oldest sister Claire’s opinion. Shortly after arriving for mom’s funeral, it was the old man who ran out of the house with her in pursuit shouting at him that he had killed mom.

My two youngest sisters wanted us to seek revenge on the man they claimed had actually killed dad. I can’t speak for Albert, but if he did thinking he was protecting his mother, he showed more courage than I ever did. The did not know dad or what mother had to put up with, they were never home. I don’t blame them, I blame him. If they came home after school they might find him passed out. If he made through the day and came home with his wife it was one big argument; the type of dysfunctional family life that my older sisters could not wait to escape by getting married. Like my two youngest sisters, they avoided some of the worst of the pain and suffering that father’s alcoholism inflicted on his family, mother in particular.

Albert was no longer a deterrent when it was reported to me that father had been seen following mother around the laundromat holding a hammer. I didn't dare ask mother what that was all about. If it was what I feared, I would have had to at least confront the old man. Better to pretend it was nothing; after all, during his drunken psychotics episodes dad had never physically harmed her. 

I forgave the old man a lot when mother suffered the stroke that left her partially paralyzed and given no more than six months to live. She did not want to die alone, and for the first time since moving to British Columbia father took his responsibility as a husband and partner seriously.

The days that I was there (I was spending a lot of time in Vancouver during this period) he would get up in the morning, down a mickey of gin, or whatever, to stop the shaking, get dressed and go to work. After closing the laundromat, he would rush home to be with mom instead of joining his drinking buddies at the Village hotel.

If he maintained that new self after mother's passing then Lea and Alice got to know a different dad. During my remaining months in Kamloops, before moving to Kelowna then Ottawa, he seemed to remain in control and the girls started spending more time at home and it was fun.

It goes without saying that I should not have assumed that he returned to his old ways. Considering what I wrote about their before-dad, their animosity will be understandable.  Nonetheless, it needed to be told, and except for that wrong assumption and what Lea F. probably meant by testifying, I make no apologies. Mother deserved, from the outset, the husband they belatedly got as a father.

I forgave my now considerate dad a lot, the reason for mentioning in the Epilogue how he was a good man when not under the influence. I even muted my praise of mother in the Prologue, the hero in my book (no pun intended) who, in spite of what should have been insurmountable obstacles, made it possible for my siblings who made that memorable journey, and all who came after, to make a good life for themselves in British Columbia.

Lucette said I was my father’s son. That does not explain why I find it hard to forgive myself for the pain I caused a woman I loved, and to overlook the hardship he caused to a woman who also deserved better, and why I may have been careless in reporting on his murder. So be it!

My dearly departed adopted sister Lea F. saw the good in everyone. She would call on Sundays from Hawaii where she moved and we talked about everything and anything, including dad’s murder. She said she got to know the accused and liked her and wanted to help her. I may have misunderstood what she meant about testifying on her behalf. She may have simply talked to the prosecutor or the judge, even the defence. For me, that explained the suspended sentence for manslaughter.

The consensus appears to be that I should not have mentioned the way our father died, his alcoholism and its impact on his family, mother in particular, so as to maintain the fiction of an eminently considerate grandpa and great-grandpa. To do so would have meant, and still does, diminishing her accomplishments, if not obliterating them altogether in favour of a false narrative. I cannot do that.

Sometimes I think I should obtain the trial transcripts to make sure I get everything right, and use whatever time I have left to tell our family’s memorable true story—the good, the bad and the indifferent—and let the chips fall where they may. It could still happen but I will probably not be the one to write it.

Bernard Payeur, December 24, 2025 Revised Dec. 27, January 17, 2026.