The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (657 page)

Mazo’s father, William Roche, worked for his brother, Danford Roche. By 1884, Danford Roche had stores in Barrie, Newmarket, Aurora, and Toronto. At the age of five, Mazo began to go by train occasionally to visit her father and his family in Toronto.

Toronto streets were not quiet like country roads. Horses, horses, everywhere! A team of powerful draft horses pulled a dray. A skinny horse pulled a butcher’s cart. Elegant horses pulled an elegant carriage. People everywhere! Women in their long flounced skirts. Men who looked like gentlemen. An Italian boy pushed his barrow of bananas and called, “Ban-ana ripe, fifteen cents a dozen!” The bananas were red.

The inside of Grandmother Roche’s house in downtown Toronto was dim and forbidding. Mazo held her father’s hand as they climbed the long, thickly carpeted stairway to Grandmother Roche’s mother’s room. Great-grandmother Bryan was ninety-two years old. She was dying! She was lying in the middle of a vast, four-poster bed.

“My little darling!” the old woman exclaimed in a surprisingly strong voice with a thick Irish accent. She reached out her long arms for Mazo. Great-grandmother Bryan was still charming, demonstrative, and domineering – an irresistible force!

Great-grandmother Bryan was Mazo’s father’s grandmother, and he loved his grandmother more than he loved his mother.

Will Roche lifted Mazo up so she could kiss Great-grandmother Bryan.

When the old woman hugged her closely, Mazo was afraid. She was grateful when her father rescued her. She clasped his neck tightly as he carried her down the stairs.

Around the table at dinner that day were red-haired and hot-tempered Uncle Danford; prim and proper Aunty Ida; calm and peace-loving Grandmother Roche; and black-haired and studious Uncle Francis. Mazo sat beside her father, and watched and listened.

“What was Father really like, Mother?” asked Uncle Francis. “Dan and Will were old enough to know him. But I…”

“Your father was not a common sort of man,” said Grandmother Roche. Mazo was impressed by the dignity of Grandmother Roche’s appearance. Her long waist was encased in a black bodice with white ruching at the neck and wrists. Around her neck was a long gold chain. Great-grandmother Bryan had given her that chain for being a good daughter.

“Mr. John Roche may have been descended from the aristocratic
de la Roche
clan of old France, but he was a rotter,” said Uncle Danford, who was standing at the head of the table carving a huge roast of beef. Aunty Ida was serving the potatoes, vegetables, and gravy.

“Your father left us to find a teaching position that suited him,” said Grandmother Roche.

“I know that, Mother, but what was he like? I mean his personality,” persisted Francis.

“I tell you he was a rotter,” insisted Danford, putting a generous slice of roast beef on his mother’s plate. “He never earned enough income to support a family. Mother had to work as a milliner. He deserted his wife and sons. Grandmother Bryan forbade Mother to follow him. But unfortunately Mother visited him once and conceived you. Fortunately Grandfather Bryan left us some property when he died, so we weren’t completely destitute. “

“Now Danny, your father was a brilliant scholar,” said Grandmother Roche. “You should be proud of him.”

“Oh yes, he was always planning reading courses for us, and sending us presents of books in French, Latin, and Greek,” said Mazo’s father. “And he corrected our grammar.”

“It was a mild spring morning and beginning to rain,” said Grandmother Roche, ignoring her full plate of steaming food. “I had just bought myself a new bonnet, trimmed with flowers and a satin bow. Little sister Fanny, who was then eight, was carrying the bonnet box. We came out of the milliner’s and were confronted by the shower. What were we to do? Return to the shop, when our mother expected us home? Never – we must face the rain.

“Just then a young man appeared before us – not only appeared but offered us the shelter of his umbrella! He bowed as he offered it. He spoke very correctly. And his looks! Why they fairly took my breath away! He was six feet tall, and stalwart. He was smooth shaven – that was unusual in those days. As for his clothes – never had I seen such elegance. His top hat was worn at just the right angle. His coat was dark blue with silver buttons. His cravat – I have no words fine enough to describe his cravat.”

“Eat up, Mother,” muttered Uncle Danford. “Your dinner will be cold.”

In 1826, Great-grandmother Bryan had emigrated from Ireland to Canada with her husband and children. Eventually the Bryans had settled in Whitby, where Great-grandfather Bryan worked as a shoemaker. The five Bryan boys mostly became tinsmiths or businessmen, although one, Jacob, became Whitby’s chief of police. The oldest of the three Bryan girls, Sarah, married John Roche. John Richmond Roche, M.A., was a fellow immigrant from Ireland and a teacher.

The Bryans hated John Roche. They were Methodists; he was Catholic. They were down-to-earth; he was high-faluting. They stuck together; he was a loner. Sarah’s marriage to John Roche did not last long. John Roche went to the United States by himself. Eventually he became a professor of mathematics at Newton University in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 1876, easy-going Will Roche, middle son of John and Sarah Roche, had come from Whitby, fifty kilometres east of Toronto, to Newmarket, fifty kilometres north, in order to help his older brother Danford. Danford Roche had just bought his first store. The store was on Main Street in Newmarket. His establishment, a general and dry-goods store, was called “The Leading House.”

Will soon married Bertie Lundy. Danford married Ida Pearson. Danford and Ida Roche never had children. Mazo was the only grandchild on her father’s side of the family too.

In 1880, despite his hatred of his father, Danford Roche had gone during hot July weather to fetch the body of Grandfather Roche from Baltimore to Newmarket for burial. At the age of sixty-six Grandfather Roche had dropped dead of sunstroke on the street in front of his boarding house. Uncle Danford had also fetched home twenty-eight boxes of Grandfather Roches expensive books. Uncle Danford had put the boxes in his stable in Newmarket. He had no room for them in his house. The books were great classics of literature. For a long time only Uncle Francis read the books. Much later Mazo read some of them too.

In 1884, Danford Roche bought a store on Yonge Street in Toronto, and his mother bought a house on John Street in Toronto. Now Will Roche was helping in the Toronto store, working variously as a clerk, manager, and cloth cutter. Danford had located his Toronto store next door to a similar establishment owned by Timothy Eaton. Danford was very competitive!

Mazo adored her father, and she found Grandfather Roche fascinating. Still, she was glad when the time came to go to Toronto’s Union Station and board the train back to Newmarket. Soon Mazo was allowed to ride the train herself. Off she went, in the conductor’s care, back to Grandpa and Grandma Lundy. She was not nervous, for the train was her friend.

The next morning, Mazo and the train raced again in the wind. Today on the first freight car there was a crescent moon. Mazo ran back to the house, into the room where Grandma Lundy was sewing.

“Bad weather, Grandma,” Mazo announced. “Thunderstorms!”

Mazo de la Roche at eleven years

No Longer Lonely

“This is Caroline,” my grandmother said to me. “You two little girls must be friends.”

When Caroline saw that Winnipeg was behind them and the long train was clacking faster and faster past flat, snow-covered prairie and bare aspen trees, she sighed, sat down, and began swinging her short legs back and forth restlessly.

The view out the window was boring again, like the view from Grand Forks to Winnipeg. Caroline hadn’t seen a single buffalo in the whole Dakota Territory. The Red River had been frozen and grey. The Pembina Mountains had been stupid hills.

“When will there be the forests and lakes in Ontario?” Caroline asked her mother.

“Tomorrow,” said her mother, pulling their lunch out of a bundle.

“Will Father be alone at Christmas?” asked Caroline, frowning.

“Serves him right if he is,” said her mother. “Now you eat your bread and cheese.”

Caroline ignored her sandwich and looked around the inside of the passenger car. It was early December 1886 and the car was crowded with Canadian families going Back East for the winter. Some were eating a cold meal. Others were playing cards. Still others were making beds for the little children who needed a nap… The seats were made of wooden slats. Above the seats were shelves that pulled down so they hung by rods and hinges.

Am I going to sleep on a shelf?
Caroline asked herself.
No! Never! I am eight years old!

At one end of the car were the washrooms. At the other end was a room with a stove to cook on. There was water at that end too. Everybody had to share. Caroline did not like sharing.

“How long will we be on this train?” asked Caroline.

“Two or three days,” said her mother.

“Why does the trip take so long?”

“Because we’re going almost as far as Toronto. We’ll get off the train in Cherry Creek, and Uncle Lambert will meet us. I wrote him a letter and told him we were coming.”

“Did you tell him I can recite, The Jackdaw of Rheims’?”

“Yes. And I said you could read well and sew beautifully.”

“I was born in Uncle Lambert’s house, wasn’t I?”

“Yes. Uncle Lambert’s house is near Aunt Mary’s house in Cherry Creek. Lambert is my older brother, and Mary is my younger sister. Cherry Creek is where your father and I grew up. In Cherry Creek there was Willsons’ Hill and Clements’ Hill…”