Why didn’t I get to know my dad better when he was alive?
By Helen Wainman
It’s a question many of us consider. If we could invite three historical characters for dinner – who would we ask?
Not too long ago, my list would have included some of the world’s best writers. All that has changed now. I would invite only one guest, my father. Not only because he knew so much of our family history, but also because of a book he wrote decades ago that I never read until this year. The unpublished manuscript had rested in an old cardboard box in my late brother’s storage locker for 45 years.
My father was a descendant of Scottish highlanders who were veterans of the Battle of Culloden. While they sailed to Nova Scotia in 1791, his story begins in 1901 and focuses on the descendants of those old warriors. His characters were mostly farmers who lived in a fictional place in Nova Scotia. Cape Breton? Antigonish? I sense he based these characters on real people, but I’ll never know.
There was one character in his book that jumped out at me and made me tear up. Percy Jeepers. How did my father come up with that name? The character was so real and his situation so sad, I cried at the end. Percy was an orphan, adopted by a neighbouring family who needed a farm hand. He wasn’t loved. He was illiterate, always filthy and hungry. But strangely, he remained optimistic. He believed he would inherit the farm when his adoptive parents died but that didn’t happen. They had already arranged to sell the farm to someone else. Percy was kicked out.
He was devastated but when the First World War broke out, he signed up.
In my father’s book, Percy’s proudest moment was when he marched down the main street of his town, dressed in his regimental gear before sailing to France.
He never came back.
Was Percy a real person? I’ll never know.
At least if I had that mythical dinner party, I’d be able to ask my father, as I poured him another glass of wine: “Dad, who was Percy Jeepers? I know he was real. Tell me more.”
