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GRANDPARENTS
When he emigrated to Canada, my grandfather was receiving a pension from the Belgian army after having had a medical discharge due to sunstroke. As a result, upon the outbreak of World War I, he was required to return to Belgium and rejoin the army. I have often wondered about what happened to him in that war, especially after reading about the horrors of trench warfare and the high rate of casualty.
Recently, I discovered that my aunt Jacqueline, his daughter, believed that he was in the Intelligence Service. Whatever his role, one certainty is that he had to leave his wife and three children - John, Jacqueline and Jeanne - alone for the duration. My grandmother and the children lived at St. Albert near Edmonton until his return.
My mother found my grandfather a very stern person - "a true Victorian". She had nothing but praise for my grandmother who she said was very warm and loving. My grandmother had an excellent singing voice and often sang arias from the operas to the children.
The first photo is of my grandmother, Therese, as a young woman; the second is of my grandparents when young; and the third shows my grandmother, Therese, with her firstborn, Jean, who died in infancy.
MY GRANDPARENTS, ALBERT AND THERESE DARIMONT
I wish I had known my grandparents. Albert died before I was born and I met Therese only once when I was a child. There are so many questions I would ask them, if I could!
There is one conversation with my father that I remember very clearly. I asked him about his father's experiences as a soldier and how he became a Lieutenant. (I had been reading a history book that spoke about the negative influence of class privilege in the British army in the early 20th Century. I wondered if it was similar in Belgium.) My Dad said, "No, he joined up as a private."
I replied,"Well, wasn't that a bit unusual for someone from an upper middle class background?"
At that point, he revealed something that to me was quite extraordinary. He told me that his grandfather, Jean Gaspard III, had had a mistress in Brussels - their home was in Jalhay - and had refused to educate his four children because they were in sympathy with their mother over the matter. Thus, my grandfather's need to enlist as a private.
Both photos are of my grandfather: in the first he is holding his infant niece Emilie in 1901; in the second he is a young boy. My grandfather was born in 1875, his wife Therese in 1883.
