Collection search - Henderson, Kathleen P. - Interview

Record information – Brief

1

Henderson, Kathleen P. - Interview

Item number (ISN):

379044

Series title:

[The Great War and Canadian Society]

Hierarchical level:

Item (Accession level)

Date:

1974-07-03

Item number (ISN):

379044

Type of material:

Sound recordings

Found in:

Archives / Film, Video and Sound

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Record information – Details

Fonds/collection:

THE GREAT WAR AND CANADIAN SOCIETY PROJECT

Accession:

1975-0098

Media:

Sound

Part:

1 of 1

Production date:

1974-07-03

Production company:

Opportunities for Youth

Production credit:

interviewer, Lori Rotenberg

Description:

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Interview of Mrs. Kathleen P. "Kay" Henderson of Toronto, who was born in 1900 in Victoria Harbour and moved to Burk’s Falls at age two. Her father was born in Ireland and came to Canada in 1857. Her mother was born in Hamilton, Ontario. She talks about: her family life; her father’s work as Methodist minister; the family’s frequent moves because her father served on country circuits; moving to North Bay in 1912, the year her father left the ministry; the strict Methodist religion; temperance; liquor “interests” trying to set fire to her father’s barn because he preached against them; her mother’s involvement in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union; the life of a minister’s wife expected to be an officer in all church organizations; parishioners always dropping by the parsonage; the family’s poverty; living in the Children’s Aid Shelter in North Bay because her father was Superintendent of the Children’s Aid Society; life in North Bay; not noticing the family’s poverty before this because it was not unusual in small towns; living a restricted life, not being able to do what other children were allowed to do because she was a minister’s daughter; not being allowed to play with Catholics; not being allowed to dance, play cards or go to movies; not being allowed to attend a musical comedy show to raise money for charity, but going anyway; a hired girl who helped the family; more on her family’s religious observances; childhood games; going to school; going to high school and business college in North Bay; going to a cottage during the summer; the children at the Children’s Aid Home in North Bay; attitudes against unwed mothers; stigmatization of illegitimate children; not being allowed to associate with Catholics; French Canadians in North Bay; her job as secretary to the manager of a bank in North Bay; the 1918 influenza epidemic; the closing of schools during the epidemic; women and girls volunteering to act as nurses during the epidemic; the Armistice; her feeling of bewilderment at seeing her father on the balcony of the town hall, speaking to a crowd, as she walked home after nursing an Italian family with the flu, and only then finding out that the war was over; her career; recollections of August 1914, when war seemed far away; boys enlisting; seeing troop trains going through the town; her father not wanting her to go after school to see the troop trains; the troops not being allowed to get off the trains; a visit from her half-brother in 1915 while he was travelling from British Columbia on his way overseas; her family’s patriotism; a wartime project by her younger brothers who collected medicine bottles in the neighbourhood, washed them and turned them into the drug store for one cent a bottle; buying chocolate bars to send to their brothers overseas; a half brother from the U.S. who joined the Canadian Army and was seriously wounded; another half-brother who was a paymaster for the Canadian forces; knitting socks and khaki scarves for the soldiers; cadet training for school boys; support for the war because the British Empire was in danger; pre-war cadet training; teachers talking about the war to their students; her half-brother invalided home from the war in 1917; not much awareness of people not wanting to go to war; the feeling by people that French Canadians were unpatriotic; North Bay as a railway town; rationing of sugar and other goods; Victory Gardens; war bonds; Victory Loans and the government pressuring people to buy them; billboards with recruitment messages; war work such as rolling bandages and knitting socks; dislike of the Germans; an uncle who had lost an arm in a railway accident and was unhappy because he was not accepted for military service; getting war news from the newspapers; and people standing outside the telegraph office to get news, where the latest telegrams were posted.~She also recalls: postcards sent home by soldiers, with tick marks beside certain statements such as “I have been wounded” or “I have been invalided home”; a brother who came back from military service and spent the rest of his life in hospital; another brother who took courses at the University of Toronto and then worked as an engineer in mines in Cobalt, Ontario; her other brother who came back from overseas and worked as an accountant; veterans having trouble finding work in North Bay; her brothers’ involvement in veterans’ organizations; her move to Toronto in 1920; getting a job with the Department of Education; leaving the job in 1928; recreational activities in the 1920s, such as dancing at the Grandstand; staying in a women’s residence; temperance; renting a small apartment for the summer on Toronto Island; boys who lived on boats moored in the lagoons and rumours that the boys were “pretty fast” and about the girls who visited the boats; the loosening of postwar morals and memories that the postwar era was one of good times; shorter skirts in the 1920s; her parents’ disapproval of her dancing; her fight to have a life of her own; performing as a dancer in a show at Massey Hall; her father’s anger at her dancing with bare legs; her marriage in 1934; the Winnipeg General Strike; her family’s political views; her mother’s support for women’s suffrage; the Russian Revolution and the view that it was scandalous to overthrow a monarchy; difficult living conditions in the 1930s; acting as a house mother for soldiers during the Second World War; and the Second World War having a greater impact on her life than the First World War.

Language:

English

Notes:

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1. The interviews took place in 1974 and resulted in the publication of a book entitled "The Great War and Canadian Society" edited by Daphne Read - copyright 1978 - New Hogtown Press, Toronto.~2. Release forms, data sheets, and summary analysis/transcripts are available in binders labelled Opportunities for Youth - War and Canadian Society in VSA's audio-visual section.~3. Part of a series of recorded interviews with elderly citizens who lived in Canada during the period of World War I. The interview material consists of their opinions and observations about the war, the war years, and the effect on Canadian society during and after WWI.~4. The interviewee signed an agreement giving consent for a recording of this interview to be placed in the Public Archives of Canada for the purposes of historical research and also signed a publication agreement allowing any transcribed portions of the interview to be used in the book under the condition that no full names, addresses or phone numbers would be published.~5. Subject description is based on information found in the fact sheet, deposit agreement, publication agreement and summary analysis.

Detailed holdings information:

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Vault ISN:

436376

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

C01391

Vault code:

GAT

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

R/R

Technical description:

POLY

Made from:

FROM LOANED MATERIAL

Status:

MASTER

Vault ISN:

439110

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

A1 2007-06-0001

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

CD

Duration:

79:28

Status:

REF

Vault ISN:

439111

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

A1 2007-06-0002

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

CD

Duration:

74:25

Status:

REF

Vault ISN:

736978

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

1975-0098/085

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

CASSETTE

Made from:

DEPOSIT

Status:

ORIG

Vault ISN:

736979

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

1975-0098/086

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

CASSETTE

Made from:

DEPOSIT

Status:

ORIG

Vault ISN:

736982

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

1975-0098/087

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

CASSETTE

Made from:

DEPOSIT

Status:

ORIG

Vault ISN:

1003824

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

A4 2007-06-0001

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

CD

Made from:

C01390
C01391

Status:

MASTER

Vault ISN:

1003825

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

A4 2007-06-0002

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

CD

Made from:

C01391

Status:

MASTER
Ordering and viewing options

Conditions of access:

Open

Consultation copy number:

A1 2007-06-0001
A1 2007-06-0002

Restrictions on consultation:

No Restrictions / Pas de restrictions

Reproduction access:

With written permission of Copyright Owner / Avec la permission écrite du détenteur des droits d'auteur

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Date modified:: 2024-07-24