During a doctor's appointment in July, 2016 my cousin Susan Gilmore Bowles was leafing through the Focus 50+ news magazine and as she went through, a name leaped off the page at her.
There was a picture of our grandmother, Mabel Hill, as a young girl of 19 in 1917. This was during the war years, and there she sat in an old car with four of her friends at the time: Ollie Gilbert, Florence Ritchie, Joy Turner and Grant Gilbert. I still remember, as a child, my grandmother talking about her friend Florence Ritchie.
The gentleman sitting next to my grandmother was Ollie Gilbert. We knew that she had been engaged during the war and that her fiance had died during the war. When Susan contacted Bonnie Stephens, the editor of Focus 50+, they both shared in the excitement. Bonnie told her that Ollie was the fellow that our grandmother had been engaged to. Susan shared with Bonnie that her grandmother had worn Ollie's engagement ring to the day she died, along with the rings of the man she had married, Harold Bell. Bonnie was delighted to hear this as she was the great-niece of Ollie. In fact, Bonnie's father still lives on the family farm where the old house where Ollie was born is still standing.
Bonnie then sent us the rest of the pictures she had of our grandmother, and soon we took a trip to meet her and even visited the farm where our grandmother's picture was taken so many years ago.
When I think back to all of the time I spent with my grandmother, I now wish we could have talked about this period of her life. What were her feelings as she kissed her first love and sent him off to war? What were her emotions when she received the news that he had been killed defending our freedom.... grief, loss, pride? We will never know how much the young women, mothers, sisters, friends lost at that time.
Our grandmother went on with her life as one must do after a tragedy such as this. She worked in her father's general store in Elmvale, and one day, our grandfather walked in. That started a love affair that lasted over 70 years.
Aunt Viola had sent Harold, our PaPa, in for a spool of thread, and that is how it all began for our family. A ride with his newfound love... a new life, and as they say, the rest is history!
Harold Bell and Mabel Hill were married, raised two girls in West Gwillimbury on a farm... first on the 14th where Bellcroft Event Center is now, still owned by a Bell descendent and then to the Cookstown Road. They had been married for over 72 years when our grandmother died at 95 years of age. She was the kindest woman I have ever known. BaBa loved her family. She was a great seamstress, making dresses which I always teased her about because I thought they showed too much cleavage for my grandmother. She would just giggle and shush me; we all spent a lot of time on the farm with our grandparents and were surrounded by love. When I became a mother, we would take our boys up to visit, and I could still see my grandmother in her rocking chair, rocking my two boys and singing to them.
That picture has brought so many memories of days gone by! Who knew when my cousin opened that paper that so much would come from it? Writing this piece has brought me laughter and quite a few tears.
SIDE NOTE
A favourite Uncle once exclaimed that “100 years from now, they will never know I was alive".
It turns out that after 100 years we can still be remembered by relatives we never even met.
It is wonderful to know the engagement ring is still treasured (photo of pendant made from the ring) and I was so happy to share the playful photo of Mabel wearing Ollie's uniform. Ollie was born in 1894 and when your birthday is on Feb. 14 it is only fitting that your life would have a romantic story, even if the story is a romantic tale of love lost.
During our visit we shared old photos and some family history, even discovering various relatives had attended school together.
Who would have known that sharing a photo of an antique car could lead to new connections and a revisiting of a love affair from 100 years past.
