Thursday, March 3, 2011

A little pre-history.....

my father had a very interesting childhood compared to most, not necessarily a great one.. it was fraught with hardships.... he was born in Burma, of a English military chemist and a Burmese woman.. one of several siblings and the middle child... their father died while they were young.. Grandma Hacket and the children moved back to the United Kingdom and lived in Scotland, where conditions were difficult at best..  for his post education he was enrolled in Navel College... (back row, 4th from the right) and was stationed on the H.M.S. Barham

the exact year of this photo i'm not sure of, but would have been in the late 1900 or early 1920's...





the following picture is dated 1920 and includes King George VI who was in a play on 'a' ship (since i don't know if he was on the Barham or not... my father loved to show this photo to anyone that was willing to look at his photo album...




he must have had a small camera at the time because he had a picture of the final days of the  German Battlecruiser SMS Hindenburg 





unfortunately he never wrote what ships these are...




he travelled the world, was the only one on his ship to get malaria, was a champion boxer and had a woman in every port...






after he and his brother got out of the military, in the middle 1920's  Grandma Hacket and her children immigrated to Canada, to the west coast where they went into the wilderness of Knight Inlet and decided to live...

my father got a boat and went fishing to make a living.. and thats where he met my mother...
she was a young girl who was working in a fish camp where he came to sell his fish....i'm not sure how the story goes but they got married in her home town of Courtenay and moved upcoast to settle.......

i wish i had more pictures of this part of the story but in his senior years he threw out hundreds of photos.... these are some of the very few that remain...

more to follow..... (hope i'm not boring you)

11 comments:

Annie*s Granny said...

Boring? Not at all! Fascinating.

Roasted Garlicious said...

Thanks Annie's Granny... i was hoping not... i think they had a very interesting homesteading life.. the next posting will be more pics of boats they built and some pics of living upcoast..

Out on the prairie said...

Remarkable history to share, I gobble this kind of stuff up.Like the photos, especially Lolita, whom i take wasn't your mom.

Roasted Garlicious said...

Out on the prairie.. Lolita was a lady from either Spain or Portugal, can't remember which.. he seriously had a girl in every port ;) there are more pics of the ladies but figured that was enough.. funny how with the dementia that those pics weren't destroyed.. i am glad tho..

Mr. H. said...

A champian boxer...how interesting. I use to be a big fan of boxing, not so much anymore though. It's so neat that you still have all of these pictures.

Roasted Garlicious said...

yes Mr. H... he was a boxer in the Navy... i used to love it too.. every Friday night on the radio... LOL then along came t.v. when i was about 13...

Angelina said...

I love these pictures! What a treasure to have to share. I don't have a lot of family pictures. Through many divorces in my family (even my grandparents!) they've all been scattered. But a couple of years ago a woman commented on my blog asking if I was the granddaughter of Captain T.J. Laforest because my family sounded like a naval family she knew when she was a kid living in Italy.

Turns out she was a childhood friend of my mother's. My mom has a notorious selective memory and doesn't remember this friend, but now I've become friends with her myself.

She sent me, for my birthday, a couple of embroidered tea towels that my grandmother had made and given to her father- I can't begin to say how incredible it is to have such a cool piece of my grandmother. I never even knew she was a needlewoman.

These stories are fantastic. Keep telling them!

Roasted Garlicious said...

aww thanks Angelina... wow what a story you have yourself... isn't it amazing :D i wish my children would appreciate the past more, but they don't.. so heck i'm gonna share them with you guys!! i did notice that my eldest granddaughter is starting to say things like 'my grandma did 'this or that' when she was younger, so i guess something is sinking in ;) i have to scan some more pics and perhaps by tomorrow i'll have a new post about homesteading on the coast....

Kinda Like a Chef said...

Soooo not boring! I find histories like this fascinating. I've been urging my father-in-law to write a brief story of his life down (he was born in the bush in Rhodesia-now Zimbabwe-and led a pretty interesting life!)

Roasted Garlicious said...

Kinda Like a Chef... i for one would loveeee to read that!!! hint hint!!!

Kinda Like a Chef said...

I will check with him to see if I can publish what he's already written and try to get some pictures from them, too!