The House Malcolm Built

by Peter Hamilton Gruner (son of Malcolm Gruner)

Family history written by Peter Gruner Revised 12 July 2010; checked 16 February 2011 Copy incorporating later family corrections

A personal family history centred on Malcolm Gruner, Jessie Mullally, their children, and the wider Gruner and Mullally families. The work combines Peter’s own memories with stories told within the family, family documents, and outside historical material.

The House Malcolm Built

Monday, 12 July 2010 Revision

Checked Feb 16,2011

Family narratives are the stuff of family history. Every family has its own narratives. A problem with narratives is that    they can often be viewed differently by different participants in the story. The histories can go quite dee p (far back) and so they have to be carefully mined for the treasures. Different miners can view items which can be interpreted differently. They can even viewed differently by the same author with the passage of time. But the stories are meaningful largely to those who try to make sense of a family history. For many, there is no interest in what a given ancestor did or did not do. For them, the only thing of importance is what their own lives mean. But the history is a legacy and it is important to get it right. Which I will try to do. Recently Ronald McDougall died 2010 in Danville Quebec. His funeral was on Tuesday, July 6 in Danville at St. Anne’s church. His four children were there, with their spouses and some of their children. Jenni and I were there along with Anne Mullally of Kingston, the only other    family representatives. Ron was the last of my mother’s generation. In the family there were 22 grandchildren. Four of them were Ron and Brenda’s children. Most of the other members of the family live outside the province of Quebec. Ron figures in our family story in a peripheral way. The family had been a close family until Mary Etta Mullally died. She died while being transfused for her aplastic anemia, intestate. This created a time of woe for my mother’s family. Son turned against family sued the family over what the father and girls considered exorbitant legal costs of settling his mother’s estate. James elicited the support of his sister Brenda against Emmet James, Jessie, Patricia, Eileen and Jean. The in-laws Malcolm Gruner and Murray Skelton stayed out of the fray, but Ron sided with James as well. It was a sad time as there was a serious rift in the family. I was disappointed because Brenda had been a favourite aunt. Over time Brenda reconciled with her father and brought her son Stephen, aged six to meet his grandfather for the first time. On the occasion my seventy-fifth birthday and the family and extended family gathering of November 2008, I thought it would be meaningful, at least to me if I could recall and write some of our family history. My father, Malcolm once mused that his life spanned much of the developments    which we know to be associated with modern living.    The car had been invented by 1904 but was not by any means used to the extent it was used today. I remember the horse drawn milk deliverer and the bread man, even the use of the horse to clean the sidewalks in the forties. The horse was still used in many farms and for transport well into the forties and even fifties. Malcolm lived through the progression of Kitty Hawk to the development of the Concorde. As a boy he had read Jules Verne so the Moon walk was a visionary dream come true. He marvelled at the various interspace shuttle flights that took place towards the end of his life. Malcolm would have read Jules Verne in serial form which appeared in the Boy’s Own Paper, a journal full of exciting stories for Boys. That publication thrived at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The bound copies that survived the wear and tear of me and my sibs childhood are in the    caring possession of my niece and god daughter Joanne Gruner Ryan.

Introduction

Malcolm’s life took different direction than those of his parents. He grew up in a more or less affluent Victorian British home. His paternal grandmother, Eleanor Beattie was a very strict and became a powerfully rich woman.    When the discussion of a possible medical career was discussed, Mal would point out that engineers and inventors were mostly responsible for advances in public health and quality of life as we know it.    He cited plumbing systems, water purification, sewage management etc. as doing more for health than the doctors up till then could do. Malcolm was also concerned with building up his adopted country and for providing efficient affordable homes. Indeed he built homes in Verdun, Town of Mount Royal, Pointe Claire and Chateauguay. He built St. Monica’s Church in Notre Dame de Grace and a Lutheran Church in Westmount.

My dad had set up his construction company in the depression years with a loan from his father Oscar Cameron. He worked hard to build and sell homes in the thirties through the fifties. He was hoping that one of his son’s would study engineering and join him in his company. I did do a few stints of summer work in construction. My inclinations were towards medicine. I was impressed how hard my dad worked during the day and evenings and weekends. Many weekends and evenings he would be at work selling the homes he had made or tending to heating of places in the winter months when they were doing inside construction.

Malcolm’s greatest pride was his family and his beloved Jessie. His politics were very conservative. With the quiet revolution he determined that he would leave Quebec and settle near his sons Tony and Chris in Oakville. When Rene Levesque came in he determined he would not pay any more Quebec taxes and he moved in 1980 to Oakville, Canada. Having his family around was his greatest pleasure. He died peacefully in his sleep, in the bosom of his family. I too am very proud of my family, my sibs all of whom are still alive at this writing. I am proud of my wife and mentor Gay.    The children and their children are a great source of happiness for me truly gifts of God. It is my hope that this rambling account will give them some insight into the family history.

I have tried to find out more about the Leipzig Gruners. We do have some documents about them, but all contact with that side of the family ended after the 1914-1918 Great War. Albert Gruner and Peter Gruner were two of five sibs. Albert born on may 5, 1840 was married to Emma whose account of their twenty-five years of marriage forms one document. She would have been a great grandaunt. The other document was a dairy account by Tante Louise about the Franco Prussian war.

Peter Georg was born on April 18, 1842. He married Eleanor Beattie in 1873. He travelled to Leipzig with her and their son Albert, aged four in 1878. Oscar would have been left behind in the care of a nanny as he was born in August 15, 1877 While there, they attended the Niebelungen Trilogy. He was an accomplished cello and piano player. Sometime after the birth of their daughter Evelyn 1878, Peter and Eleanor separated. It was rumoured that he lived with another woman.    He became a naturalized British subject on December 1886.(Documented) In September of 1887 Peter from London and his brother Hans, a geologist from Berlin went to their mother’s    funeral in Leipzig. There is an entry in the account where Peter went to Karlsbad in the Prague area in April of 1889. I guess it was to take the bath treatments which were popular in the latter part of the 19^th century and early in the twentieth. There is no suggestion as to the type of illness he was suffering from. He died suddenly in Richmond England on May 6, 1890 aged 48 years. When he died, Emma and Peter’s brother Albert came to London for the funeral. There is a note that Eleanor was terribly affected as their son Albert was very ill with peritonitis, which lasted a year.

Malcolm’s father, Oscar Cameron was the second of three children of Peter Georg Gruner and Eleanor Hamilton Beattie. Peter and Eleanor were married in 1873.    Eleanor was a very determined Victorian artistic woman who had six unmarried brothers. Each of these brothers did very well financially and left their money to Eleanor. This made Eleanor financially independent and she used her influence to determine the future lives of her children. She determined that her son Albert would be a famous barrister. Albert studied law but was never called to the bar. He was a good man but lived in certain trepidation of his mother. He did not marry his wife Maude Simson till his after mother died.    He studied the violin and taught it. He died in Hampstead March 9, 1938.

Evelyn was the only daughter of Peter and Eleanor. Eleanor’s plan for her was that she would be a concert violinist. Evelyn was a woman ahead of her time. She did in fact play first fiddle in the London Symphony. Her relationship with her mother was not a happy one and at age 21 she demanded her dowry and moved out. Eleanor refused to acknowledge her daughter and it was forbidden to speak of her at home. Malcolm only found out about her after he had graduated from Birmingham University in engineering.    He was visiting in London one day looking for work. While there, he picked up a newspaper and found, on the front page, the news that an Evelyn Gruner had been picked up on charges of disturbing the peace on behalf of woman’s rights. She was a suffragette. Malcolm contacted his parents and they informed him that Evelyn was indeed his aunt.

She was always dear to Malcolm and he honoured her by requesting that Evelyn be the godmother of his second child myself, Peter.    A book could be written about Evelyn. I had written to her and she to me through the war years. She lived through the bombing of London, with her cats and dogs. She wrote several imaginative books and pamphlets. I only met her in    the spring of 1953 when she came and visited my grandfather Baba ( our childhood name for Oscar Cameron)

I remember that she looked very much like Baba (Oscar Cameron) She called her brother Oscar and Celestine (Edna Graham) called him Michael._

Eleanor determined that her son Oscar would be a famous surgeon. The role model was that of Sir Berkley Moynahan. Sir Berkley was a competent surgeon to the Queen Victoria. He was a very prominent man of his day. He was an excellent surgeon who wrote a popular surgical text. The text is occasionally referred to today.    A treatise on the diseases of the spleen was included in the text. The spleen in the early years of the twentieth century was an unknown entity and indeed thought to have vestigial function. Indeed, it was only in the late fifties or so that the splenic functions have been properly identified. Oscar Cameron Gruner wrote the chapter on the spleen but it was never acknowledged by Moynahan. This irritated our grandmother Alice Patricia Charlton Nightingale Gruner. Alice Patricia was a first class nurse who trained at the Leeds Infirmary. Oscar came to Montreal as an assistant professor of pathology in 1910.    He co-authored articles on the pathology of various tumours with    Dr. Emmet James Mullally.(3)

Mullally was a 1901 McGill graduate, and one of the first groups of doctors to do what is now called a surgical residency. Doctors, on graduation in the early years would often go right into practice. Emmet James Mullally was my grandfather, an author interested in Canadian Catholic history, and education. He did fairly well financially early on in his career and medicine was a background activity for him. His heart was in education and history and literature.

3) Intercellular Structures in Monocytes in Cases Of Malignant diseases. P 917 Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine, June 1934

Malcolm was born in 1905, the year Saskatchewan was incorporated as a province of the Dominion of Canada. In 1910 Oscar and Alice came to Montreal with their two children, Malcolm and Douglas. They had a house at 590 Pine Avenue, very near to where Pierre Elliott Trudeau had been living since leaving the prime ministership of Canada. Oscar came to McGill as an assistant professor of pathology. That Pine house was known to me, but it has since been torn down.

Oscar's life had been quite productive at McGill. He authored or co-authored number of articles published in journals such as the American Journal of Pathology etc. In l913 the signs of impending war were obvious and Oscar felt he should be back in England. He returned and joined the British Army medical corps and did work as a pathologist. He must have been the only pathologist in the British Army! On their return to England, Malcolm was taken to Portsmouth to see the British fleet in manoeuvres. As a young boy he expressed how impressed he was by the might of the British Navy.   He would have been nine years old at the time.

On 25 July 1909, the pioneer aeronaut Louis Blériot made history by becoming the first pilot to cross the English Channel in a rickety monoplane. The 37-minute flight won a £1,000 prize offered by Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the London Daily Mail, to the first man to cross the Channel in powered flight. The huge significance of Bleriot's achievement was recognized by Northcliffe who proclaimed on the front page of his newspaper the words “England is no longer an island.”  The Channel with modern 'flying saucer' phenomena. This article is an attempt to reconcile these two differing approaches to the subject, and set the scare in its correct sociological context with the use of original source material.” Scareships Over Britain: The Airship Wave of 1909, by Dr David Clarke)

Bleriot's flight marked the high point of a feverish summer in which the public had been gripped with aerial hysteria and fear of invasion from foreign hordes. The year 1909 saw the realization that the British Navy's world-wide supremacy was directly under threat, and for the first time in its history the island was vulnerable to invasion from the air. Blériot may well have been the first to cross the Channel, but just two months before his flight newspapers had suggested that the Channel had been crossed secretly, and at night, by a far more sinister aircraft - the German Zeppelin airship. In the spring of 1909 Germany's prototype airships were incapable of night reconnaissance operations over the British Coast. And yet, during four months that spring, several hundred eyewitnesses claimed to have seen “phantom Zeppelins” moving across the night sky, performing manoeuvres which were impossible for any contemporary airship or aeroplane of the day. In addition, a number of people claimed to have seen this mysterious airship at close range, hearing its whirring engines and observing its cigar-shaped gasbag and dazzling searchlight. A few even claimed to have seen and conversed with its crew. Although few of these claims were taken seriously, just six years later the first air raids, led by Zeppelins, would be launched against East Anglia, bringing the hitherto fictional horror of bombing to the very heart of England.”

“The phantom airship sightings, dubbed by some commentators as “scareships”, were largely ridiculed by the Press. But they contributed to the growing demand by British patriots for more resources to be spent upon a military aircraft for defence against the Zeppelin threat. These demands reached fresh heights during the winter of 1912-1913, which coincided with a second airship scare. These outbreaks of hysteria have been largely ignored by historians who have studied the period immediately before the outbreak of the First World War. As a result, these fascinating scares have been researched by writers of UFO literature, who have compared the observations”

Malcolm went to Leeds Grammar School. He did fairly well in several subjects. He received prizes of books. He and his brother Douglas had a happy busy life together. As teenagers they cycled the length and breadth of England. When Malcolm was sixteen he obtained a motorcycle. He again did a lot of touring and camping. He once told me    that he never travelled under sixty miles an hour on his motorcycle. At university, Malcolm traded in his motorcycle for a Morgan automobile. There are pictures showing Malcolm in this three-wheeled vehicle. It would be a collector’s item today.

A mischievous side of Malcolm was shown in his collection of naughty verses. My sister Lela was able to pry many of these from him. Regarding the car he would say:

//A delightful car the Austin

No place to get lost in

A place for my ass

And a bottle of Bass//

Although encouraged by his father to study medicine, he was never really interested. Malcolm also was interested especially then i.e. the early twenties, the new finds in the various Egyptian excavations. Prominent were the Carter digs. Malcolm was a very interested and for the time a well read Egyptology buff. One of the digs revealed the mummy of an Egyptian princess. In the course of examining the preserved mummy my dad was sent her ringed hand for evaluation. In 1922, Malcolm was told that there was no real future in Egyptian studies so he went to the University of Birmingham and studied civil engineering. Shortly after that, the Carter expedition uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamen.

There are many incidents in Mal’s life the memories of which will be evoked by individuals reading this. An item in Mal’s life was the coming out party for the Duke of Norfolk.     

“ Sir Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, 14th Earl of Norfolk, 17th Earl of Surrey, 34th Earl of Arundel, 34th Baron Maltravers, Order of the Garter, Royal Victorian Order, Order of the British Empire, Territorial Decoration, Privy Council of the United Kingdom,PC, Earl Marshal, Chief Butler of England (30 May 1908 – 31 January 1975), styled Earl of Arundel and Surrey until 1917, was the eldest surviving son of Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk, who died when Bernard was only 9 years old. His mother was Gwendolen Fitzalan-Howard, Suo Jure Duchess of Norfolk, Gwendoline Mary Herries, 12th Lady Herries of Terregles, and he inherited her peerage when she died in 1947.

He was educated at The Oratory School and was commissioned into the Royal Horse Guards in 1931, but resigned his commission in 1933. He joined the 4th (Territorial Army) Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment in 1934, and was promoted Major in 1939. He served in World War II, where he was wounded in action. As Hereditary Earl Marshal, he organized the Coronations of George VI and Elizabeth II, as well as the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales.” “On his death the Dukedom passed to his cousin Miles Stapleton-Fitzalan-Howard, 12th Baron Beaumont, 4th Baron Howard of Glossop. The Lordship of Herries of Terregles, being an old Scottish peerage, was inherited by his eldest daughter, Lady Anne, who married English cricketer Colin Cowdrey, Baron Cowdrey of Tonbridge.

Somehow Malcolm was acquainted with him and so got an invitation to this prestigious event. Not too many details have come down. It seems that he held himself well in ballroom dancing and other social skills. I was however was given a wood and silver crucifix for my fiftieth birthday. The Duke of Norfolk had given it to Malcolm in 1925. It is interesting that there was never much more mention of this person by Malcolm. He does not seem to have maintained any kind of relationship with him. He did however seem to have had a meaningful life according to    Wikipedia’s sketch mentioned above. It is reported that the family of the 14^th Duke of Norfolk, Henry Granville Fitzalan converted to Catholicism the 1839.

In 1926 Malcolm then a graduate engineer, immigrated to Canada and went to work at Vickers in Montreal. He presented himself to his father’s old friend and colleague Dr. Emmett Aeneas James Mullally. In so doing, reconnected with Jessie Rosalie whom he would have    first met in 1910 as pre-teens.    Vickers’s did not pan out, Malcolm returned to England. (He worked in Lancashire on a sewer line installation project. His immediate supervisor was Jack Meyers who in his latter years lived in Solihull near Birmingham).

The encounter with Jessie started a very long love affair. In England much correspondence came to and went from Malcolm. Jessie, in 1928 visited England with her father and brother James. The occasion for the trip was that Jessie had graduated with her Master’s degree in English. Jessie’s Masters subject was Francis Thompson’s the Hound of Heaven. Emmet, James and Jessie    arrived in Aberystwyth and who met them at the train but Malcolm.    Jessie had some special time with Malcolm and they became engaged.

The story of Malcolm’s courtship of Jessie is one, which is fascinating. Jessie kept a journal describing Malcom as a kind gentle person, Jessie had several admirers however. Jessie’s sisters Jean and Brenda intercepted all Mal’s love letters. They would laugh when telling the story because although Mal’s writing was very neat and orderly, they were unable to read his writing. Malcolm returned to Canada to get married and to start his married life in the midst of the deep financial depression of 1929. Their wedding was at St. Patrick’s church on September 10, 1930. E.J. Mullally wrote a very touching account of the events leading up to and including the wedding. (5)

Marriage was an adventure for both Malcolm and Jessie that none of their previous life experiences had prepared them for. First there was Michael, then Peter and Christopher. It was like there was a family unit, a little family. Malcolm and Jessie first lived on Decarie Blvd, then Earnscliffe then on Burton Ave. in Westmount. It was on Burton Ave. when my    memory started to kick in.    Burton then as now was a quiet short street. The houses were originally built for the managers of the Grand Trunk Railroad which eventually morphed into the    CNR.

There were some interesting neighbours. There were the Reynolds and another family whose daughter figured in some of our childhood pictures. There are memories of Michael wandering off to play in an abandoned warehouse and mother being very upset. There was a Johnny Underhill who was a figure of that time. He was considered a wild character with whom play was forbidden. Burton Avenue was great because it was not far from Malcolm’s office where Eddie McAsey worked as manager. The McAseys were long time friends of Jessie and Malcolm. (Jimmy McAsey married Sarah McGinnis who was one of Jessies best friends. They had three children who were friends of Malcolm and Jessie’s children.) This shop and office complex still remains to this day under different management of course. It is on Summerville road not far from Victoria Avenue. The shop was right there as well. It is interesting that I was at a meeting this past July of the Cameron foundation on Burton Avenue. I kind of remember the house and its back yard after some seventy years.

(5) See Appendix E.J. Mullally’s: “Jessie’s Marriage to Malcolm” September 1930

Mr. Charlebois was a burley but gentle truck driver who stored the truck in that Sommerville shop garage. He was a burly big man who was kind to us. I recall his having a cast on his foot and ankle and therefore being out of commission for a while. I was told he had had a truck accident. I secretly wondered if he was the right man to be driving the truck.

After the war, another Mr. John McNeider Charlebois joined the firm. John’s mother was well known to Jessie’s mother. John had been a captain in the Canadian Army. John married Muriel of Toronto and they had four children who are contemporaries of Malcolm and Jessies children. One, Jeffrey became a diplomat for the Canadian Government. Hugh was an artist who taught art in Ontario. The third boy Rodney is an accomplished woodworker and radio announcer    who worked on CTV in Montreal. A daughter Clare was a good friend of Lela Gruner. John and a friend, Gordon Kelly, had been long time friends of Mal and Jess. John was honoured by being my godfather. John became the office manager of MHN Gruner and Co. Ltd. His area of expertise was that of a salesman.

There were a number of my father’s men who made lasting impressions on me. In general they were good men who were very loyal to my father. He on the other hand often took jobs that were less than financially advantageous in order to keep his men working. Some of the names of workmen that were with Malcolm for a great part of his business career were Mr Serge Joyal,    a painter, Mr Fuchs and Mr Napoleon Remillard: both carpenters, Mr Sauve was a skilled labourer.

Burton Avenue also holds memories of my first encounter with Baba and Yellie. They had come over from England sometime in 1937. I remember the occasion somewhat because my interest in planes and flying started then. As part of their arrival with gifts was the gift of a model airplane to me. The airplane had a propeller, which had an elastic power system. I have since made these myself in my teen years. I was impressed because you wound the prop and set it off and it would fly. I don’t think the plane survived the day I received it. But from that time on I was hooked on planes. I think however it was only about ten years later that I started making models. It was about thirty years after that that I made my first gasoline engine powered plane and that, for my son Dave. He was more interested in engines and not planes.

There have been a lot of anecdotes tied to this period of time. One of then had to do with the maids that helped Jessie and Malcolm cope with three poorly contained energy systems. Peter, was very impressionable. Like all kids soon recognized that certain language could produce startling effects in the right setting. Sometimes it would also provide a release.    One day mother Jessie appeared on the scene when Mlle Marie, the then appointed was in charge. Marie had a somewhat limited, but effective and invective vocabulary. Marie had put Peter in the high chair with a soft boiled egg and a spoon and left him to his own devices. After several attempts to neatly crack the egg top and cut into the egg there was a mess. Peter was not concerned about the mess, but rather, being thwarted from his meal. Well, the invective, the taking of the Lord’s name, the oaths that came from ‘the innocents mouth’ were too much for Jessie to handle. Marie was given a reference and left our employ.

Michael always had wanderlust. He used to venture far and wide from home. He seldom got lost but provided for some interesting moments. To this day Mike loves to travel.

* It is amazing how life turns around at times. In October of 2006 I gave a talk on prostate cancer chemotherapy to a West Island prostate cancer support group. After the lecture and questions, a man came up to me and asked me if I remembered the Reynolds on Burton Avenue. He was one of the Reynolds.

Maids. Jessie had help running the family. A family named Benoit had three daughters    who at various times lived in as maids. The mother came for a while by day.

Catherine and Pauline Benoit were in love with the same man. Who would get the man depended on whom Jessie gave a special evening off. Pauline was older, and so she got to go out with Butch whom she subsequently married.

Catherine was younger and easier than Pauline. She was with us for awhile, but then she too got married.

Lorna, was the oldest of the family and had been a maid when Yellie and Baba lived at 311 Berwick.

Mother Benoit and Tony

There is an interesting story about Jessie trying to impress on Anthony Charlton the importance of brushing his teeth. Tony was not impressed with the act of brushing. Jessie tried to tell Tony if he didn’t brush his teeth, he could loose them. Mrs. Benoit had a noticible gap in her upper teeth. Hearing Jessie admonish Tony, she pointed to the gap in her teeth and said that is what happened because she did not brush her teeth. It seemed that Tony was duly impressed and set about to brush his teeth with purpose.

First encounters with movies were at Burton Avenue. Pat Mullally went to England in 1938 for a prolonged visit. Noise re the upcoming war did not seem to dampen her enthusiasm for the trip. One evening before she went Jessie and Malcolm had a farewell party for her. At the party were shown some movies that Malcolm had made on his old Cine Pathé movie camera.    This was a hand wound device. He made some films of his new family and their friends. He did a cowboy and Indian type movie. These    movies have gone the way of the Dodo.

I don’t recall any specific theme. One shot was that of a Locomotive barrelling on into the screen to come crashing into the house. I remember wondering where it would go as it left the screen, as it seemed determined to do. The technology and what happened to the camera man was not my immediate concern. Malcolm also had a series of shorts, black and white cartoons: Felix the cat. He had some shorts of Harold Lloyd as well which we played    as children.

Sometime in 1939 we had moved to Crawford Park in Verdun. Malcolm got his first Kodak Movie Camera and projector.I remember him filming the visit of the King and Queen    to Montreal.

King George and Queen Elizabeth 1939

Years after when we had moved to 911 and when Malcolm had progressed through a series of movie cameras and feature film we found the Cine Pathé movie camera and the films and used to amuse ourselves playing them. Malcolm went on to produce a number of films involving members of the family. There were a few anecdotal films about belief in Santa Clause in which he had caught me sleeping. I used to claim that I never slept, especially on Christmas eve. There were several other incidences he caught on film. Then he went on to big time production. The first was called Hocus Pocus Kalamazoo. The film stars brother Christopher and it shows him getting a magic set for Christmas. Chris would have been about nine when the picture was started. Production had to be halted because Chris was chased at the bus stop one day coming home from school. He ran in front of the stopped bus to avoid being hit by snowballs thrown in friendly fire and was then clipped by a car who did not stop after hitting Chris. Chris sustained a broken left femur. Fortunately Mr. Remmiard was at the site and picked Chris up and brought him home. He was then brought to St. Mary’s Hospital where there was a pediatric ward.    Chris’ femur was set and he was put in a full leg cast. It was estimated that it would take about three months to heal.    Within a week or so, Chris felt that he could hobble around when no one was looking and the femur was dislocated again.    So Chris had open surgery and a plate was screwed on to the broken ends of the femur and he was re-casted.

Needless to say, Chris was watched like a hawk after that and it was nearly a year later that he was out of the cast. He had to learn to walk again and that was a slow process. Chris was nearly thirteen when the rest of Hocus Pocus Kalamazoo was filmed. The film’s memorable scene was the family including Malcolm were seated down to a roast beef dinner. Malcolm who rarely acted let alone do cameo shots asks for a show of hands. Chris alone is sent off to wash his hands and, before leaving, looking longingly at the roast beef, waves    his wand over the Roast beef and makes it disappear. Malcolm looks non plussed as do all those seated around the table. Make that beef come back orders Malcolm, in unmistakable mime. Chris of course can’t bring the beef back, he is ordered to study his books. The last scene in the sequence was the family reduced to eating sandwiches with glaring looks at Chris who is standing eating a sandwich with one hand and rubbing his spanked behind with the other.

The next major picture by Malcolm was the Alladin’s lamp with Nicholas Nightengale as the star. The story shows my younger sibs Tony, Nicholas, Lela seated in front of the fireplace with Jessie reading Aladin and his wonderful lamp. It so happened that we had a facsimile of an Arabic lamp. The picture shows Nick getting up picking up the lamp and asking was it like this? (in mime) Jessie acknowledges that it was like that. The reading goes on and the camera catches Nick falling asleep with the lamp in his hand.    Fade out, next scene shows Nick in the kitchen getting some Brasso to clean the lamp and lo, the Genie appears. The story then shows Nick going to all his sibs from Lela to Peter asking them what they would like. In 1950 Malcolm and Jessie decided to enlarge the house at 911 Caledonia. The dining room that was shown in Chris’ movie became the kitchen, and the living room which showed Jessie reading to my sibs was to become the dining room. Malcolm and Jessie had discussed what their new living room would look like. They wanted oak beams that really held up the floor above which was to become the master bedroom. They wanted oak panelling on the walls and a large bay window. The floor was to be in Kentucky oak with varying widths of boards and to have them seem to be pegged in.

Back to the Genie movie, there is a shot of Malcolm and Jessie discussing plans for the addition when Nicholas walks in with his lamp. He asks Jessie what her dreams for the addition are and she tells him. Nick rubs the lamp, a Genie summons dumbfounded Jessie out of the old living room and with a swoop of the Genie’s hands there is the new finished living room. Jessie’s expression is priceless.    Talk about instant gratification. Malcolm was so patient in editing his films. These would come in two or three minute segments, he would splice them painstakingly and end up with a presentable show. These films are now on DVDs. Malcolm would have had a ball with the new recorder cameras.

In the summer of 1938 Jessie took Michael, Peter and Christopher who would have been a toddler age three, to Souris West, PEI. This was where Jessie’s grandfather Michael built the home that remained in the family until the late 1990s. Michael Mullally was the ninth child of James Mullally and Anastasia Finelly of Capogue, Mullinohone, Tipperary, Ireland. Michael and    his wife Mary MacDonald had four children. The oldest was Emmett Aeneas James Mullally, Jessie’s father. Michael died shortly after the house was built at age 39 of tuberculosis. (6)    Emmett, at age 10, had become the man of the house who got through school quickly and by age 16 was teaching school. Emmett was a good writer with an easy style who recounted stories of his father’s passing and life in medical school as well as his courtship with Mary Etta Mullally. These papers are available and hopefully will be put in a collection.

Grandparents with Michael, Peter and Christopher in Burton backyard garden, 1938

That being said, in 1938 the voyage to PEI was memorable on several accounts. I have memories of the house and the road in front, which by the late 40’s had been re-routed to behind Emmetts house. There were many more sailing craft; fishermen used sailing vessels for fishing rather than motor boats. The fishing industry was much more dedicated and across the Souris River, fishing shacks had direct access to rail lines to take fish into the cities and other ports. We visited the farm across the way, which was occupied, by my grandfather Mullally’s cousins Val and Maude MacDonald. Val was a first cousin to Emmett. They had a large family, some of whom gathered at the Skelton reunion in July of l994 at Michael’s house, which had gone through custodial ship of Eileen, then Peter and now Jane Skelton. Jane sold the house to a couple from Maine who are able to use the house much more that we could.

There are strong memories of being aided and abetted by some of the Val-Maude clan to rustle up the chickens that were laying eggs. After creating uncooked scrambled eggs this writer was turfed out of the chicken house with a spanking and telling off. It took him a while to get over it, but not too long. Friendship with these cousins has remained strong to this day.    We visited another farm on a very pretty point of land. We simply called it Foncie’s place. Foncie was another first cousin to Emmett and was Val’s brother. Alphonse was Captain Angus grandson. Foncie’s place has some pleasant memories for this writer.

We visited a number of places on that trip I can remember visiting Cardigan, some thirty miles from Souris where there was a very civilized place with running water etc. (Emmett’s Place had no electricity nor indoor plumbing until well after 1949!) There was a relative of Florence Donohue, Emmett Mullally’s sister who lived there named McNichol. Another memory was visiting an Army camp. It was quite exciting. There were a number of real tents where the soldiers slept.

Another of Emmett’s first cousins, brother of Val and Foncie was Billy Archie. Names of MacDonald’s are usually the first name and the first name of the father, the surname MacDonald is taken for granted. So, it was Val Archie, and Billy Archie, or Douglas Billy Archie for Billy’s son Doug. Etc. Billy Archie was the colonel of the regiment and they were on manoeuvres. It was quite exciting. I think this was a Black Watch battalion as Billy Archie was dressed in a kilt.

(6) E. J.Mullally wrote a very touching account of the death of his father, years after his dad’s death.

In 1995 Billy Archie’s son Douglas (Doug, Billy Archie) died he was 69 and a fine man, a great doctor and a friend. Billy Archie was a teacher at Prince of Wales College and subsequently became the Lieutenant Governor General of the Province of PEI. His term of office included Canada’s centennial year.

Another memory of the 1938 visit was the sea and its mystery and power. We were playing by the water as the tide was coming in. Christopher decided to venture into the water. Soon he was sucked into the water and I have a vision of Chris being pulled away by the force of the awesome sea. I must have yelled because soon after grandfather Emmett came rushing over white flannels and all and hauled Chris out. This has always had a powerful image on my mind. Then we went back to Montreal and moved to Crawford Park in Verdun where Malcolm had built a number of houses.

In 1939 George VI and his Queen visited Montreal. They paraded along Sherbrooke Street. Malcolm got a few shots on his new Kodak movie camera. It took coloured films. Later that year we had shots of the fall leaves, with Michael, Peter, and Chris, shuffling through those leaves. September 1939 was memorable for me.

In the spring of 1939, a new King and his gracious Queen captured the hearts of Canadians. As war loomed overseas, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.. After months of meticulous planning on both sides of the Atlantic, King George VI of England and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, are about to begin their month-long royal tour of Canada. The visit – the first by a reigning sovereign to the Dominion – begins two days behind schedule in Quebec City after a nine-day ocean voyage marked by heavy seas, dense fog and towering icebergs. All along the banks of the St. Lawrence, cheering crowds have lined up to glimpse the King and Queen as they wave from the ship's deck. The ex

“Buchan, in an effort to foster Canadian identity, conceived of a royal tour by the country's monarchs; an idea that the official royal visit historian, Gustave Lanctot, opined in his official account of the visit, “probably grew out of the knowledge that at his coming Coronation, George VI was to assume the additional title of King of Canada.” Tweedsmuir's desire was to demonstrate with living example the fact of Canada's status as an independent kingdom, having Canadians “see their King performing royal functions, supported by his Canadian ministers.” Prime Minister Mackenzie King, while in London for the coronation in May 1937, formally consulted with the King on the matter. According to biographer J. A. Smith, the task for Tweedsmuir, and the Canadian government, was “how to translate the Statute of Westminster into the actualities of a tour… since this was the first visit of a reigning monarch to a Dominion, and precedents were being made.^__[14]__ According to the official Royal Tour historian Gustave Lanctot, George VI was to be present in Canada as a living example the fact of Canada's status as an independent kingdom.

George VI and Queen Elizabeth open and tour the Canadian Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

The arrangements were made and on May 17, 1939, King George VI and his royal consort, Queen Elizabeth arrived for their tour of Canada on board the Canadian Pacific liner RMS Empress of Australia; the reception at Quebec City, where they landed, Trois-Rivières and Montreal were positive beyond expectations,^[15][16] and the King impressed Quebeckers when he responded to the welcoming remarks in French.^__[17]__ Their Majesties took up residence at La Citadelle, where the King performed his first official tasks, amongst which was the acceptance of Daniel Calhoun Roper as the American envoy to Canada. Two days later, the royal party travelled to Ottawa, where the Queen laid the cornerstone of the Supreme Court building,^__[18]__ the King dedicated the National War Memorial in front of 10,000 war veterans,^__[17]__ amongst whom the Queen requested she be able to walk,^__[19]__ and the couple went to parliament where the King granted Royal Assent to nine bills. Following the ceremony, George stated: “No ceremony could more completely symbolise the free and equal association of the nations of the Commonwealth.” From there, the royal couple travelled the country from coast to coast, where they continued to be greeted by throngs of Canadians, even in the immigrant-rich but Depression battered Prairies.^__[20]__

The King and Queen made a brief foray into the United States, from 7 to 10 June,^__[20]__ visiting Washington, New York, and Poughkeepsie; they were accompanied by the Canadian prime minister, still Mackenzie King, as the sole minister in attendance to the King, rather than by any British minister, by way of reinforcing that George VI's visit to the United States was a visit from Canada,^[14][21][22] despite the point that the King and Queen were presented by Secretary of State Cordell Hull to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as “Their Britannic Majesties.”^__[23]__ For Mackenzie King, this assertion of Canada's status as a kingdom independent of Britain was a key motive behind the organization of the tour; he wrote in his diary on May 17, 1939: “I… told [the Queen] that I felt somewhat embarrassed about taking in the entire trip with Their Majesties.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_tours_of_Canada

“Excitement is palpable as onlookers wait for the royal couple to step onto Canadian soil. Well, not soil, concedes an eager CBC reporter, but rather red-carpeted cement. “But still, it's immobile, and it's Canada, and the culmination of weeks of planning and hoping and waiting.” They toured the country by train to meet their subjects and bolster the bonds of Empire. From small-town whistle stops to bustling cities, eager crowds cheered, sang and waited for hours, eager for a glimpse of royalty. CBC mobilized a crew of 100 to cover the tour, producing a rich radio archive of that royal spring.”      http:%%//%%archives.cbc.ca/society/monarchy/topics/2367/   

In the fall of 1939 we had moved from Burton avenue in Westmount to Crawford Park in Verdun. It was a cheerful sunny place. We had obtained a refrigerator, and did not have to have ice delivered to our place as at Burton Avenue.

I have a memory of one of the neighbours, a Norwegian woman reacting to the news of Hitler’s waging war. I am not sure if we had the only radio, or that ours was on and there were people gathered around. I can visualize this elderly woman clenching her fist at the sound of Hitler’s name. She was unable to talk English. Her communication skills were excellent. I got her message. There were other people on that block of houses built by Malcolm who have since come back into my life. One family was the Lessards. The woman, somewhat younger that Jessie, has been a patient of mine along with her husband Bert for over 15 years now. They had three boys two of them were older than I. They were very interesting in that Bert was the token French person in a big multinational company. He had long retired and used to drive to Florida each winter. He died this past year and Georgette, his wife gets to Florida on her own. The war went on; we went to school. It seemed that we had gone to at least three different schools that year. In 1940 Tony was born.

Mike and I walked to school, which was beyond the present Douglas Hospital. On one school day morning, in February 1940, walking home from school we could see Dad’s car arriving with Jessie and newlyborn Anthony Charleton    “Tony”. We tried to hail them down and get a ride but to no avail. When we got home Tony was installed. It seemed that we moved into another place in Crawford Park before moving to Standstead Road in the Town of Mount Royal.

In 1939 Oscar Gruner known to us as Baba commissioned Malcolm to build him a home in the Town of Mount Royal. The house that Malcolm built at 911 Caledonia was first addressed as 311 Berwick. Years later, the house received    another address namely, 505 Laird. An architect named Betts had designed the original house. He was a very good man and very competent. The house was built for Yellie (Alice Patricia) and for Oscar. It originally had three bedrooms and a library. There was a living room, a dining room and a kitchen and a maid’s room with its own bathroom. It had a beautiful finished basement with hardwood flooring.    The house was built of stone. It had a mansard roof. The house was on a corner lot. There was a garage, with a flat roof attached to the house.

The lot in back of the house was vacant and in the spring it flooded. This flooding prompted some of the children to navigate the area in various crafts usually an empty sandbox. There were a few occasions when Mike stayed over night. I have heard that Michael reminded them of their son Douglas who died at age l9 in Australia. He was killed trying to stop runway horses from his motorcycle. In April of 1940 Yellie developed congestive heart failure and died. She was waked in the living room of 911. Yellie’s was my first encounter with death. We were very fortunate that there were no more deaths in our immediate family for a number of years after that.

Oscar contemplated a number of options after Yellie died. As a boy of seven I was not brought into his personal world. I gather that he explored the world of monastic life. I could never find out whether this would have been contemplative or other. During this period of his life he gave the house that Malcolm built to Malcolm. I remember being present at the signing and my father Malcolm giving the sum of one dollar to Baba. Even I was impressed with the worth of that transaction. Baba promptly pocketed the dollar. I thought he should have had it mounted. As the reader will note, it was mounted in my mind’s eye because it provided a shift in direction for the whole Malcolm and Jessie Gruner family for the next forty years After moving to Caledonia, the fifth boy child, Nicholas was born to Malcolm and Jessie. Nicholas and Tony would not have known any other home until they made their own homes. This is also true of Lela and Jenni, but I am getting ahead of the story. The presence of Tony and Nick necessitated some changes to 911.

One of the changes was to build a bedroom over the garage. The room was quite pleasant. It had some built in closets and drawers and a built in desk. It also gave out to a balcony from which we could see the garden. I had mentioned the vacant lot above. Among the items left to Malcolm and Jessie in Alice’s will was the property at Lac Louisa, near Lachute. Mal and Jess discussed priorities and felt that the money from the property at lac Louisa would pay for the vacant lot behind 911 Caledonia. The lot was bought, the area drained and gardens put it as well, a not too deep concrete pool. I believe the pool was meant for water Lilies etc. These came only after years of using the pool for cooling off and horsing around in.

The garden was fun looking back on it but a lot of work which kids are not always enthusiastic about! We had strawberries, grapevines and some veggies. Also, there was a nice rose garden. There were clumps of white, red and black currents and a few fruit trees. There was also, around the pool a nice rock garden. I appreciate these more now than I did as child and adolescent.

During the 40s, Malcolm did a lot of building in the Town of Mount Royal. He built a number of houses on Melbourne Avenue in the Town of Mount Royal. In the later war years and in the post war years getting nails was very difficult. I remember travelling with my father to St Albans to get a barrel of nails on several occasions. As one goes into St. Albans even now, one passes by the Tyler place. It used to be known as the Tyler and Wriston place. It is situated on a little inlet of Lake Champlain in Vermont. They had cottages and a hotel. They had organized activities of kids of all ages. In the later forties we spent several weeks of several summers there. Malcolm would come on weekends then go back to supervise the activities of MHN Gruner and Co. Ltd. I wonder now if he brought kegs of nails back with him. There were no restrictions from a customs point of view then.

In the summer of 1947 we were at the T&W place. Malcolm thought it was time that Mike and Peter should learn how to sail. There was a sloop, 14 or 15 feet with a centreboard. After a number of lessons we did learn how to sail. One weekend Malcolm decides to come sailing with Peter. It was a nice sail. Father Malcolm had a great pair of eyes. He    spotted a turtle sitting on a rock. As I turned to look, a wind gust came up and we managed to control the boat and the sails but the rudder came off its hooks and was floating away. Peter rigged a jury rudder from the boat oar and we retrieved the rudder and re-attached it. I think after that, Malcolm was confident that we could cope with various adversities.

Malcolm had an interest in sailing that went back a long time. He and his then unmarried brother in law James, in the late thirties attempted to construct a sail boat. This writer, as a young boy, remembers seeing rib sections cut and assembled and stored in the shed behind 2021 Union Avenue, where Emmet and Mary Mullally resided. The project never got off the ground so to speak.

In the summer of 1938, when Jessie had her three boys off to PEI, Malcolm rented digs at the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club. He did some sailing and got himself a Yawl D Class, a gaff rigged sailboat of thirty-four feet. It had a gasoline engine and a semi keel. There was cabin space for four but there was no stand-up room. Malcolm and Jessie sailed it on weekends and during the week. They did a few trips to Oka which necessitated going through the lock at St. Anne De Bellevue.

The boat provided a great deal of relaxation for Malcolm in those early years. This writer never week ended with his parents aboard the Orca, but he remembers picnicking in the afternoons after Malcolm came back from work. The boat was at an anchor mooring. To get to in, we rowed to it in a clinker-hulled rowboat. We would make our way either by sail or under power to a sandbar. He could get in fairly close when he retracted his centreboard. We would anchor,            then go for a swim and have a picnic supper of sandwiches made by Jessie.

In l948 he bought an Ackroyd class cat boat named Valhalla. Chris and I sailed that boat a lot. We raced it, we capsized it we cruised it. The waters around Lac St. Louis were not as polluted as they are now so capsizing was not a major problem. Righting the boat and bailing it out were the challenges. I was invited to sail with Ed. Bottrel in his 14 foot International sloop. He eventually raced in the Olympics. He still is in the sailing business as a sail maker. I had sailed with Seacott Hamilton whose family were also keen sailors.

Ackroyd Dinghies including the Valhalla 948

It is interesting that in the mid fifties Malcolm seemed to loose interest in Sailing. I suspect there was some sort of financial crunch as both boats were sold. Sailing in the family was to wait until Tony got his Jolly boat and raced it. Chris in the meantime bought Leonard Hynes’ Viking class boat, which was a forerunner to the Shark. Since it was a mahogany hull and needed much work, Chris got the boat for a song. He raced it in Lake of Two Mountains and cruised it there as well. Malcolm may have sailed a few times on Chris’s boat. When Chris moved to Toronto in the early seventies, he stripped the hardware off the boat and left the hull in Hudson. He and a friend went into the construction of a Grampian from a kit. That was a most interesting boat. Christopher’s family showed very little interest in sailing, so Chris became interested in ultralight flying. That ended sadly.

In January 1946 Lela was born. Malcolm especially was ecstatic when his first daughter was born. The name of this first female child had been determined some twenty-three years before. Malcolm was in Rome in l925. He was most impressed when he visited the catacomb where St. Cecilia was buried. He was taken up with her story. He determined then and there that his first daughter if he had any, would be named Cecilia.    After five male children you can imagine the joy that Lela brought. Did I say Lela? Well, you know life is never how you plan it. Suffice at this point to say Lela has been the master of her fate and had the last word on her name. She has made a number of pronouncements in her time. Lela for Cecilia is how she pronounced it! Malcolm never really minded.

At the time of Cecilia’s birth my father had her birth announced in the newspaper either the Star or the Gazette or both. At the end of the announcement Malcolm had put Deo Gratias. This drew comments like what a hell of a name to give to a child. As I was involved in Latin studies by this time and knew full well what it meant, I used to taunt Lela with my free translation: ‘silly ass!’ Lela caught on quickly as she always has. I remember her Christening and the open house after the ceremony. I remember getting questions like how are you boys going to cope with a girl; we said would make her the goalie and we would have a full team. If those people could have seen Lela in her soccer uniform      in more recent years racing down the field as a fierce warrior, they might have questioned the name Malcolm chose and asked why not Victoria?!

Pinocchio, the family dog took to Lela right off. He considered her a child to be cared for. And every where that Lela went the dog was sure to go. It followed her to her friend’s house it stayed with her everywhere and remained with her till it was time for her to go to bed. This used to annoy Lela. Then Lela discovered if she fed the dog she could distract it; and if she distracted him long enough she could get away without the dog finding out.

A note about Pinocchio. The The Skeltons got a dog after seeing the Disney Classic Pinocchio. The dog a black with patches of white furred beast was about as big as Dulcinea. When Murray Skelton came back from the war they moved to Benny Farm apartments. The dog could not go so they asked Jessie and Malcolm if the dog could stay with us until they we able to relocate in a private dwelling. We had the dog for about three years before the Skeltons found their place on Lansdowne Avenue. The dog got to know all of the Gruner boys and Lela and he must have liked what he knew. He would have come with us to High Gate Springs, the Tyler and Wriston place. It was a heavy time at 911 as we knew we would be loosing a friend. And a deal was a deal, the dog was loaned to us.

Well, one day after the settling of the Skeltons at Lansdowne, Malcolm brought Pinocchio back to the original masters. Pinocchio was placed in the back of the car with not too much space to note outside landmarks. When he arrived at Lansdowne, he was kept tethered until he had become accommodated. One day he got loose. He had run away. We were notified on his departure. Two days later he was on our doorstep. From then on he was our dog. The dog was a companion for many. I used to take him for walks at night, never with a leash.

We used to tease the poor dog not in a harmful way. Peter was the worst. He would get the dog to walk on a slip rug then pull the rug and the dog would struggle for balance. Then he would be called again and he would approach the rug and gingerly put one paw on the rug. Again he would be coaxed to get on fully only to have the rug pulled again. Impish delight!

Pinocchio developed cataracts and could only see a few feet ahead of him. He used to have some tremors, which would respond to some bicarbonate of soda. One winter night he went out to relieve himself as was his custom and he never returned. We speculated that he was aware of his impending death and he lay himself down and died. We never found his body.

Lela had a very interesting career. Her college history was filled with adventure and confrontation with her mother and a diversion for Malcolm. She spent some time abroad in Spain, Valentia where she perfected her Spanish. She developed some interesting friendships there. Later she went on to do her masters in Social Work. While in Vancouver she met her future husband with whom she worked. That is an amazing story which is best told by her. She married Dick Brugger an ex Franciscan priest. The have two children whose lives are most interesting and whose stories should be told. Joshua is their oldest child, a very sensitive perceptive and funny person who has been interested in inprov comedy. He is a skilled innkeeper like his grandfather. Jessie Brugger is a lovely young woman. She is an artist who has recently received her masters degree in fine arts at the New York Academy of Art in May of 2010. Interestingly she received her bachelors degree at Concordia University in Montreal in 2002 at the same time as I received my Masters degree in Theology.

Lela had learned to hold her own with her five brothers, and anyone else for that matter.

In the early fifties, Malcolm’s construction business fared quite well. He was involved in building in Pointe Claire. He built as series of homes called Lansdown Gardens and Hampton Gardens. Both areas are well settled to this day. The houses have accrued character. In his attempt to interest his second son in engineering, Malcolm had Peter do the drafting for the prefab plans for a group of six houses that can be seen from highway 20. This was done in the library of the house that Malcolm had built at 911, in the late spring and early summer of 1950, the Holy year.

After those houses were built, 911 was scheduled to have some alterations. Both Jessie and Malcolm consulted with the original architect of 911 a Mr. Betts. Included in their dreams for the home was a living room the floor of which would have varied widths boards of Kentucky oak, oak paneling and a bay window, rather a bow window. In addition, they wanted hand hewn BC fir beams to support the second floor bedroom. This was to be the new living room, with a door giving off to the garden.    Above the living room was a new master bedroom, with a bathroom and a sewing room; this to be entered via the library. And below the living room a giant play room. The former master bedroom was to house the two girls. Jennifer was born in September of 1951. Her brother Peter, a freshman at Loyola college remembers being a little embarrassed when, visiting his sister as a newborn babe, and looking at her through the window, was asked “are you the Daddy?”    He did however become Jenni’s Godfather, an honour he was quietly pleased with. He had several failings however as God father. One of these was his use of expletives. It did come back to haunt him. One time, Jennie frustrated in cracking an egg exclaimed “Oh sit” It became quite clear that her capacity to pronounce sibilant sounds were limited or it would have sounded more like what her brother uttered at times. (Shades of former housemaid Marie)

Jennie went to St. Joseph’s high school in the Town of Mount Royal and then went on to Loyola College to get her BA degree. She met some interesting people while there and her friendships with some of her high school friends deepened. Janet Cholette, Eileen ,    and are among her friends. She specialized in leisure activity and got involved with the Montreal School for the Handicapped. She met Ann during that time and shared a flat with her on Decarie boulevard.

She made more friends including Mrs Pink and Mr. deKinder. Sometime later she went into the financial field and got her masters in financial analysis. She work at the Three Macs firm then went on to the Caisse de Depot where she held the British portfolio. This era took her abroad to several out of the way countries including Ouzbekistan. Jennie then met John Parsons. That is a delightful story. They married and had a ring ceremony at 83 St. Louis Road in Beaconsfield in the 1995.    Jenny was a victim of the Caisse de Depot’s downsizing. She is an active volunteer and ardent custodian of    Gruner and Parson family matters.