"In the 1950s, Canada Presumed I was a Russian Spy."

Harry Leslie Smith died on November 28th, 2018. He was an ordinary man who lived through extraordinary times. He was born during an era when the working class lived destitute, and the entitled lived lives of excess and narcissism. Sound familiar? It should that type of economic suffering has returned to the 21st century. In 2024, food bank use and the homeless crisis are now at the "Buddy can you spare a dime," proportions of the 1930s.

My father's journey from poverty to middle-class security was an odyssey most of his working-class generation experienced- if they survived World War Two.

His generation believed in worker solidarity, which ensured that following 1945, the State built social safety nets through taxation. The Welfare State guaranteed every citizen a life worth living, but this pissed off the rich.

The Green and Pleasant Land was unfinished at the time of my dad’s death.

I've been piecing it together from all the written notes, typescript & index cards my father left behind.

The sixth anniversary of Harry Leslie Smith's death is November 28th. I hope to have the entire work available for you to read by that date.

Below are Harry's memories of arriving in Canada 70 years ago. Ironically the day his new life began in Toronto in 1953 is the day his life ended 65 years later.

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I want to finish the job I started with Harry Leslie Smith and remain housed. Getting a rather bad bout of cancer at the start of the pandemic, along with a diagnosis of lung disease, altered both the trajectory of my life and the prospects available to me.

The Green & Pleasant Land

I departed England on the Empress of Australia for Canada with my German-born wife, Friede, in November 1953.

Britain had turned its back on a nation fit for the working class when it returned Winston Churchill to government in 1951.

It was time for a new start and a chance for a life worth living that class-conscious Britain refused to offer me a thirty-year-old carpet weaver and part-time car cleaner from Halifax.

We left Britain with £50 between us, which took us 2 years to save from our working-class wages.

The night the Empress slipped her moorings from Liverpool the air was brisk and ripe with the chatter of other immigrants bound for an uncertain future.

Friede and I were bundled in heavy coats damp from the rain. From our third class observation deck, I waved farewell to the land of my birth. I wasn't sure if it was to say goodbye or good riddance.

As I stared at the disappearing shore, I thought of all those people living or dead I had brushed against during my young existence. I thought of my sister Marion dead from TB in 1926 and dumped in a pauper's pit because she was the daughter of a family of piss-poor miners. I thought of Alberta, my other sister who held my hand during the famine of the Great Depression and who now languished in an unhappy abusive relationship. I thought of my mother driven mad from the abuses she endured and delivered during the worst of the 1930s. "Don't Drown in one of the lakes in Canada," were the last words she said before I left for Liverpool and the world beyond.

The further we moved from land, the fainter were the echoes from my past. Some memories wouldn't leave me. Things like my dad, dead ten years resting in a pauper's pit. In my head, I heard his voice and imagined him saying.

“It’s time to make your mark, lad. Have a bloody good life for those of us who didn’t.”

Soon, there was only silence from the shore and the sound of the ship's engines cutting through the sea towards the future.

The next four days, the ocean was rough and the ship rolled violently from one wave to the next. Friede only stirred from her bunk to be sick in the communal toilet outside our berth. I was unaffected by the crash of waves against the hull. The ship pitched back and forth but in all my life I had never felt more steady on my feet.

It was love at first sight, when just after dawn nearing the end of our voyage, I saw Canada’s coastline. .

It was unrequited love because Canada didn't know what to make of Friede or myself.

Customs agents at the Port of Montreal believed us spies for Russia. They took issue that our British Passports had a visa stamp, which allowed us to travel through the Soviet zone in Germany to West Berlin.

We were deemed suspicious despite it being explained to them- that the visa was issued so Friede could visit her family in Berlin.

We were grudgingly allowed to go to Toronto, but our steamer trunk was seized for further inspection.

Canada Customs was under the impression that they would find a secret compartment in the trunk which contained copies of the Communist Manifesto.

It was a long train journey to Toronto in a smoky third-class compartment. It was after dark when we arrived.

Toronto was cold and empty of people because shops and restaurants were shuttered for the evening. We had no friends or contacts in Toronto where we could spend the night.

There was no past, only tomorrow ahead for us.  Friede and I walked from Union Station to Young Street. Once there, we followed it north for a mile, until we found a rooming house that was open and welcoming to weary travellers from abroad. I didn't know what was going to happen to me but I knew it wasn't going to be any worse than what I experienced during the thirty years of my existence.

Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co-morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost-of-living crisis times. So you can join with a paid subscription, which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription or just help out with a tip. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it's all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take care, John