Wallingfords

My mother, Lilian C Pedley née Wallingford  arrived at 100 years old on March 29, 2018!!!

 So that prompts me to write about some of the information I know about the Wallingfords. There appear to be many Wallingford families all I think originating in England as there is a Wallingford, England not far up the Thames from London, UK.

Some of them have created a geneology of their part of the Wallingford family. Since I am related to my mother, (betcha didn't know that, eh? :), I will be writing mainly about her family background.

My mother was born in 1918, on March 29th near the end of WW1. She was 1 of 11 children. Sadly two of them died I believe several months after birth but these surived:

  1. Lilian C Wallingford
  2. Dorothy Wallingford (Allan) (still alive in Ottawa in 2018 as of August.
  3. Emily Wallingford (Davis)  passed away a few years back in Lethbridge, AB where her daughter (my cousin) Pat lives.
  4. Myrtle Wallingford (Burnell) - still alive in 2018 August in Burnaby BC.
  5. Errol Wallingford (no contact for years but lived in or near Kingston and attended and taught at Royal Military College. (an electronic genius)
  6. Ron Wallingford (a runner and professor at McMaster and Laurentian University (I believe living in Sudbury)
  7. Richard Wallingford - last I heard living in North Bay or Sudbury area and drove buses.
  8. Sidney Wallingford, lived in Ottawa his whole life, worked at some government job, single, and died a few years ago..
  9. Neil Wallingford had rheumatic fever when young which contributed I am told to his too early death. He and my dad, CWPedley found at http://cwpedley.blogspot.com    loved to do music together and made up at least one song I believe called "Blood on the Saddle", a spoof on cowboy movies of the 50's and 60's. They loved and laughed as they played and wrote and visited together. 


I can picture both of them now at my grandfather, George E Wallingford's, family cottage, on MacGregor Lake (near Perkins or Ville des Mont, Quebec, not much more than 45 minutes from Ottawa where they lived) out on the porch under the pines, laughing and composing. Grandfather George made this cottage  for his large family entirely by his own hands I am told. 

I have many happy memories with my cousins and uncles and grandmother Irene (née Vessot) Wallingford. And yes, with my cousin Wayne playing hide and seek in rowboats in Blackburn's bay which had thick weeds where one could hide a whole rowboat and a kid, me! :)

 Grandpa George also owned a bit of beach by the bridge over the road passing by MacGregor Lake and they rented out rowboats and charged people for use of the beach and the boys ran a canteen as they called it, a little simply snack shop. I can still remember seeing Coke 5 Cents, signs there.

Later the government needed to make a higher replacement bridge which cut off most of the access to the beach but by then the boys were old enough not to mind not having a canteen. I understand that Grandpa George got a good price for the government messing up his access to the beach! So I guess it paid off.

Below some photos taken when I was an adult visiting the old cottage and after the old rotting cottage was taken down as there was no one left to take care of it. Two of the brothers, I believe Ron and Errol bought the other siblings' share of the property and took down the cottage and sold the land to a few people that wanted to build new cottages on the lake.














Grandpa's Boathouse as it was left dragged way up the hill from where it resided most of it's life on water to protect Grandpa's Peterborough wooden motorboat and Mercury outboard motor.

 

The boathouse much closer if not on the original foundation made for it.

The road to my Aunt Emily's cottage just past Grandpa's cottage.

The George & Irene Wallingford's House
at 63 Pinehurst Avenue, Ottawa
(have recent one showing updating coming soon below)

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The Halifax Explosion Song Written by Daniel MacIntyre

Honouring the Life of Charles Wesley Pedley

Honouring the life of Charles Wesley Pedley, My Dad, a grandfather, a great-grandfather after his death.

What do I say about my dad?

He was from that old English stock, a gentleman, a blind man who learned to be cheerful and happy in spite of becoming blind, a musician, a composer. a wise man, a father who had no father, well at least not after his 11th birthday when the Halifax Explosion took him.

He did not talk much about his personal feelings. That was a characteristic of the age he grew up in. I do not ever remember him saying that he loved me. I don't remember him hugging me. I had to start those two things with him as I grew older and longed to hug my dad.

It is not that he didn't love me or my sister, Sylvia Wiens. He did. You could tell that by his other actions. But he lived without a father-example, he became a man in an age of revealing personal feelings as perhaps being weakness. And as a parent, you COULD NOT be weak.

I loved him, admired him but I just didn't know him on a personal level until he was dying of oesophagical cancer when he said, as I watched over him, "They are all dead now." I asked. "Who?" "All my old friends like Joe Wilson, and Harry Lowrey" (the farmer on whose farm my dad worked and the man who treated him like a son I am told) in Eastern Ontario.

Then he said, the most revealing thing, that even my mother who is 92 as of March 29, 2010 said, she had not known until I told her. He said, "I prayed for them, every day!"

For my nieces and nephews on my sister's side of the family, he was the only grandfather they had ever known and they loved his cheerful sense of humour. My sister's husband, Ted Wiens lost his father when he was young [??], and he grew up I guess much the same way but in a different age.

The picture here is probably my dad's most cherished memory and perhaps the highlight of his folk music career. He got to write the official ballad of Niagara-On-The-Lake's Bicentennial, [included later] AND got to sing it for the Queen Mother!

She shook his hand and he told my mother, "I'm not going to wash it for a week!" He was a monarchist. A historian. A man of passion under control. A Christian. A man who learned to cope so well with his blindness, that when someone explained something to him, he would say, "I see!"

He became a comfort and source of cheer to another blind man, in Niagara on the Lake, Mr. Jones, I believe.

Without knowing it, on a subconscious level, because he was always so healthy, his cancer sneaked up on us. I took him too much for granted. He got sick and passed away, in 1989, January, a few short months after seeing his oldest granddaughter, my daughter, Ann get married to Jon Guinn of Attleboro, Massachusetts. [It is so hard to say 'died' for some reason, maybe because we want to hold on to his memories as all that is left of this humble but accomplished man!].

Suddenly I thought of the times I had neglected phoning him, of visiting him. I resolved NEVER to do that again and let my mother be so alone. But I had regrets for some time that I had to deal with because of my neglect of him.

So if you are reading this, please do not neglect your parents, your mom and dad. They will not always be with you. I don't want you to have the regrets that I had to deal with for some time.

And now it is time to celebrate his life!

The life of Charles Wesley Pedley, MUI

[My dad had to go to work when he was 16 because of losing his father, so he never completed high school and of course, not any college. But he knew all kinds of stuff and he used to joke that he had his MUI. "Master of Useless Information"]

-Charles G. Pedley, the son
-For Sylvia Wiens, his daughter
-For Lilian Pedley, in 2010, in her 92nd year in March!
-For And all the grandchildren and great grandchildren that he never got to know and who never got to know him.

-I hope some others will contribute memories of dad, or grandpa as well. His oldest grandchildren were perhaps just pre-teens. Therefore they do not have many memories except the ones I mentioned about him having a very good humour about his blindness.

Halifax Explosion Actual Video

Explosion 1917: Explosion Now! 2000's

Halifax 1917: Shattered City

Halifax Explosion: Where My Dad Lost HIS Dad 1917

Halifax Explosion: Where My Dad Lost HIS Dad 1917