Elizabeth Wright is a former Highfield High pupil, who now lives in Canada - earlier this year she contacted me via our web site and sent a few photographs of her time at Highfield.
I thought it would be interesting to know how her move to Canada came about and Elizabeth kindly supplied me with 'her story'.
I hope it will remind Highfield pupils that there is a big world out there and that it has never been easier to travel to achieve your dreams.
Dear Pete,
Here is the story of how we came to live in Canada.
The two-year course I took at Blackpool Tech was actually more like a business course than a secretarial course. It included business practice and accounting as well as the usual shorthand and typing. English language was compulsory as was mathematics. They also insisted on one afternoon a week of physical activity under the instruction of Miss Matthews, Sir Stanley’s daughter.
I met my husband in 1963. John worked for English Electric, now British Aerospace, at Warton. He was sent to Boscombe Down in Wiltshire to work on a plane being developed for the RAF. We married in April 1965 and during our honeymoon the new government of Harold Wilson’s Labour Party cancelled the project. John didn’t know if he had a job to go back to and I had given up my job thinking I would be living in Salisbury. It well and truly spoiled what should have been a very romantic time.
We knew two families who had taken the big step of emigrating to Canada. They had also worked for English Electric. We wrote to them asking about job prospects, cost of living, the availability of housing etc. They sent glowing reports. So we contacted Canada House in Liverpool and made our application. We had originally intending going in the autumn of 1965 but our friends advised waiting until after the Canadian Federal Election in case that changed things and also to avoid beginning our new life with a Canadian winter. The people we had been corresponding with lived and worked in Fort Erie, Ontario. They both worked for companies involved in the aviation industry.
We had a moving company pack up our stuff send it by ship hoping we would have somewhere to put it by the time it arrived. On 12th April 1966 we packed two suitcases and with £150 in our pocket boarded a Boeing 707 at Manchester Airport and flew off into the unknown. Our parents weren’t happy but accepted it after the shock had worn off. I was 22; John was 28. Our friends were waiting to meet us at Pearson International, Toronto and took us to see Niagara Falls which was on the way to their house in Fort Erie. We stayed with them until we had our own place.
John went for a job interview on the 13th April 1966 and was given a job on the spot. They put him to work right then and he didn’t come home until clocking off time. He had to borrow money from his friend Jack so he could buy lunch as he had no Canadian money yet. Two weeks later we rented a furnished house and bought a great big ugly car; I landed a job with a brokerage firm processing cargo trucks crossing the border at the Peace Bridge, unfortunately that only lasted until they found out I was pregnant. It didn’t seem to matter. John was making twice as much money as he had in England, the rent was less, food was cheaper and petrol was so cheap we couldn’t believe it. John’s job came with medical and hospital coverage, which was great as there was no government healthcare then.
In December, 1967 with another baby on the way, we moved to St. Thomas, Ontario and John started work for Ford of Canada at a new plant they had just built. That began a career that lasted 32½ years. I was a stay at home mum and really enjoyed it. We are retired now. We keep busy renovating our old house and I grow roses. We haven’t been back to Britain since 1998 so we are overdue for a trip. The rate of exchange and the price of petrol are holding us back at the moment.
I look back and I’m amazed at what we did. We weren’t worried or afraid. We were young and the world was our oyster. It’s only now when I think of everything that could have gone wrong that my hair stands on end.
Our nephew who now works for the Inland Revenue in Hampshire, just spent 2½ years travelling the world. He spent a year in Australia seeing the country paying his way by picking up odd jobs as the came along. He also went to New Zealand. He came and spent 3 months in Canada. He couldn't work here but he stayed with us or our daughter and son-in-law when he wasn't travelling. He went as far east as Nova Scotia and as far west as Calgary, Alberta. After he went home to England he went back to Australia to be the best man at a friend's wedding. Then, still not ready to return to a working life, travelled in Thailand for a couple of months.
I hope you find this interesting. It doesn't seem very exciting now I have it down on paper.
Kind regards
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