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Record #3267
Name :
: Hugh BLAIR (1913 - 1999)


Father
:
Mother
:
BMD and other details
Date of Birth
: Nov 1913

Marriage (1)
:
Marriage (2)
:

Date of Death
: Jan 1999
Abode (1) : Place of BirthScotland, Lanark, Glasgow
Abode (2) : Place of Death / BurialCanada, Ontario, Nepean
Sailing Information
Date of Arrival
: 6 Apr 1930
Country
: Canada

Ship
: Letitia

Placement Family
:
Homes / Agencys
Institution (GB)
:

Agency
: Quarriers
NotesFrom: The Quarriers Story: One Man's Vision That Gave 7,000 Children a New Life in Canada, By Anna Magnusson.

Hugh Blair went to Canada in 1930 at the age of sixteen. He recalled that when he arrived in Quebec he wanted to go straight home because everyone was speaking French and he thought he'd been sent to the ends of the earth. Coming to Canada had seemed like an adventure ot a tennage boy who just wanted to get out of Bridge of Weir. However, after eleven days at sea, a two-day journey by train from Quebec through to Brockville and another train ride north to Stittsville where the farmer met him in a Model T Ford truck, Hugh was completely disorientated:

"We got my trunk into his truck and we started in from Stittsville and, or my God, there was nothing! No houses anywhere for about the first three miles, then you hit good farmland ... and I'm coming through this and I'm thinking, 'Where am I going? Am I going right into the bush? Will I ever get out of here?"

As soon as they got to the farm, Hugh was introduced to the rest of the family and then it was straight out into the barn where he was confronted by the sight of fifty-five cows standing in a line waiting to be milked:

"I thought to myself, 'What in the blessed name of goodness do I do with these!' The closest I'd ever been to a cow was seeing one in a field in Glasgow. I couldn't milk a cow, I didn't know what to do! [The farmer] told me, 'Just wait till we ask you.' He was a very good man that way."

Hugh was fortunate that he landed with a farmer who had taken Home boys before and who understood how unskilled and uninformed he would be. For the first month Hugh said he was no use at all as a farm hand, but the farmer was patient and kind and gradually Hugh became more skilled and was able to do many chores; hoeing, gardening, cleaning the cattle, milking the cows (it took him six months to learn that) and driving the tractor. Hugh reckoned it took about six to ieght months before he was completely confident in his work and did not need anyone to tell him what to do.

[He] remembered Sundays, when there are fewer chore to be done, as the worst days for homesickness:

"I don't think there's any feeling like it, homesickness. If you haven't experienced it you wouldn't know it. It's so overpowering. I remember one Sunday feeling so bad that I went out walking. Where I was going to I have no idea, but I was walking towards the station where I had got off the train. I must have walked about three miles and I was still about two miles from the that station when I suddenly realised the futility of what I was doing, and I came back ... I can remember lying in bed and I'd be thinking about the park where I used to play soccer, back in the Home, and the River Gryffe and walking across the bridge and if I could just get back and walk in those old familiar haunts again, wouldn't it be so great? ... I would say it'd be six months before that only happened occasionally."

Still, Hugh was taken immediately into the bosom of his family, the Caldwells, and wrote later that 'I had come to the best place in the world to work for a real gentleman.'

It took Hugh about a year to feel at home in Canada and slowly, slowly he became a part of a community; he looked back on those times with real affection:

"In those days you traded help for such things as threshing, corn cutting and wood sawing, and they were real affairs. The one farm wife trying to outdo the other by the meals they served up to the twenty or so men that sat down to dinner and supper. There were no coffee breaks but during the half hour that we sat around waiting for our dinner to digest, we swapped tales, traded life histories and in general got to know one another. I didn't like the suit I had come over with. It was made of durable tweed that is now to fashionable and so expensive. When I finally saved enough money to buy a blue serge suitI started to go to church, joined the choir and went to all sorts of things connected with the sociability of church life. Bakc then there were Sunday School picnics, choir and male quartet practices, rehearsing for plays to raise money, church suppers for the same reason. 17 March concerts, Christmas concerts beside the house parties and card parties. I can still hear them shourting, 'You're euchered!', scolding their partners for not playing this card or that card, their impatience with those who deliberated too long."

Hugh Blair married Annie Ella Patrick on March 25, 1936, at Carp, Ontario. They had three children: William, Nelson, Heather and Margaret (Peg).

Hugh Blair died in January, 1999, at Nepean, Ontario, Canada. 
ContributorsCreated : 2008-03-04 17:18:37 / From original database

Last Updated : 2009-01-18 14:53:57 /

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Surnames starting with:   A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z  4 Entries        
IDNameDOBPlace of birthArrivals & ShipsDest.AgencyFamily links
9664 BLAIR, Elsie1896ENG,     Jun 1911 : Carthaginian CAN Middlemore  
3267 BLAIR, Hugh1913SCT, LKS, Glasgow Apr 1930 : Letitia CAN Quarriers  
11520 BLAIR, John M 1892IRL, ANT, Belfast Jul 1904 : Southwark CAN Barnardos  
21963 BLAIR, Robert ENG,     Apr 1925 : Athenia CAN Quarriers