The 300-block of West Hastings (at Homer), looking

The 300-block of West Hastings (at Homer), looking east, 1911. As Bella, Amy, and Algie
would have known it when they returned to Vancouver in 1911.
Photo by Philip Timms. Vancouver Public Library VPL 6707
Chapter Three
Bella, Algie, and Amy
M
other (Lenora Amelia, or “Amy”) was born on
New Year’s Day, 1889, in Morden, Manitoba, a
small town about 120 kilometers southwest of
Winnipeg on the new transcontinental CPR
line. Like thousands of other “Ontario English,” her father,
Robert Wilson, along with his brother David16 — both
doctors — had come out west with their wives several
years earlier in search of economic opportunity, eventually
settling in Morden. After suffering a series of political
setbacks, David succumbed to the lure of Vancouver
and its mild climate and in 1889 moved his family to the
West Coast where he started a new practice. In early 1893,
Robert and his wife, Mary Isabella (“Bella,” née Wallace),
soon followed with four-year-old Amy, five-year-old
Wallace, and their piano. They had scarcely settled into
their new home on the corner of Robson and Thurlow
An excerpt of the eulogy given at Robert Wilson’s funeral.
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“Today I deem it a privilege, but a very sorrowful privilege, to stand here and as
the representative of all who knew him, do honour to Robert Wilson, whose life
was one record of truth and uprightness. When I have said that, I have said the
best that can be said for any man. The life he lived is the best funeral eulogy that
can be pronounced beside his bier. Unostentatious, unselfish, forbearing, forging,
gentle as his master, singularly free from censoriousness and captious fault-finding,
never given to anger, with the courage of a gentleman, a persistent devotion to
his calling, a tender lover-like fondness for his wife who feels as none other the
bitterness of this hour, an attachment to his children that almost displaced the word
‘government,’ and an undying affection for his relatives, we seldom see the like.”
16. Dr. David Henry Wilson (1855–1926) was born near Huntley, Ontario. After graduating from medical school in Toronto, he became the personal physician
of Sir Charles Tupper, one of the Fathers of Confederation. He moved west and in 1879 started practicing medicine in Nelson, Manitoba. When the CPR bypassed Nelson, Wilson put his house on skids and dragged it to the new townsite of Morden. From 1883 until 1888 he was an MLA in the Manitoba Legislature,
serving as Provincial Secretary and Minister of Public Works. He helped incorporate the Manitoba Medical College where he also taught. In 1888 he resigned
from the government and the following year moved to Vancouver, where he practiced medicine until 1894. He was the founding president of the Vancouver
Medical Association and president of the Conservative Association of British Columbia. A prominent member of Vancouver society, he was also on the executive
of three loan and insurance companies.
B ella , A lgie , and A my
*
21
As a young child in the prairie town of Morden,
Amy dreamed one night that she heard a roaring
in the distance. As it grew louder she saw a herd of
thundering bison headed straight for her. When it
reached little Amy it parted in the middle around
her, leaving her amazed and unhurt. A baby bison
then stopped beside her, sat on its heels, looked
around, and said, “The earth is the Lord’s and the
fullness thereof (Psalm 24:1).” And went on its way.
Wallace (left) and
Amy. Undated,
probably while
they were still in
Morden.
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streets when tragedy struck. On May 24, 1893, Robert
died. He was just forty-one.
The next few weeks were trying for Wallace and Amy.
Neither of them had known their father well as he had
been busy with his medical practice. Bella reassured
them that he had gone to heaven — a happy place —
and yet she kept weeping uncontrollably. One event
stuck in young Amy’s memory. Each day friends and
acquaintances would call at their home, dropping off
notes of condolences that the maid then took upstairs to
the grieving family. One day Amy heard an angry outburst
from her mother’s room. Bella, looking out the window,
was shocked to see that one of the callers had arrived
wearing bright red, rather than the traditional black.17
A few months later Bella moved her young family back
to Ottawa to be nearer to her parents, who owned a farm
at Bells Corners. The next few years were happy times for
the children. They spent most of their weekends in Bells
Corners with their grandparents, enjoying the freedom
and surprises that farm life offers. During the winter Bella
would bundle both the children in huge buffalo rugs for
the trip back and forth. One Sunday in springtime, little
Amy — dressed in her white, lace-trimmed, Sunday best —
17. A more complete account of this time can be found in The Other Side of Silence by Mary McAlpine (pp 50–52).
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Not much is known about the origins of the Wilson
and Wallace families. The Wilsons were originally
lowland Scots. Robert’s father Thomas immigrated
to Canada from Ireland about 1935, married Sarah,
and became a successful farmer in Carleton County,
near Ottawa. The Wallace family had immigrated
to County Cavan, Ireland, from Scotland before
coming to Canada and settling in Bells Corners,
a farming community just west of Ottawa.
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decided to look at the pigs. Leaning a little too far over the
railing of the pigpen, she fell head first into the mucky pen!
These idyllic visits came to an abrupt end in 1896 when
Bella’s mother and father both died. In their wisdom,
they had stipulated in their wills that Bella’s two brothers
should inherit the farm while Bella should receive their
cash and savings — she was a widow with two children
to raise. The brothers never forgave their parents for
this. They felt that they should have received the farm
and the money, and then they could have doled out to
Bella whatever she needed. Bitterly resentful, the brothers
came to view Bella as their enemy and never spoke to
her again. With this inheritance, Bella became financially
secure — not affluent, as she had to be prudent about
how she spent her money — but secure. The children
never wanted, but some things such as a private school
education were beyond their reach.
Music, however, was a passion that Bella and the
children could indulge in. Although raised a Baptist, Bella
would sing and play instruments with just about anyone,
including a music-loving Catholic priest! The night before
Dr. David Wilson, my great-uncle, circa 1883 when he was a
member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly.
Archives of Manitoba. Used with permission.
her wedding she slipped away from her parents’ farm and
visited the local priest, a good friend with a musical bent,
and together they passed the evening playing duets. Amy
inherited that love of music. One afternoon when she was
about five, she disappeared from their home in Ottawa.
Bella raised the alarm among the neighbours and soon
everyone was out looking for little Amy. Finally a woman
ran up to the distraught mother and said, “The Salvation
Army band passed by here a while ago and a wee girl in
a big bonnet was following it.” Sure enough, little Amy,
mesmerised by the music, had fallen in step behind the
B ella , A lgie , and A my
*
23
Right: Wallace and
Amy. Undated.
Far right: Bella.
Undated.
procession and trotted off with it. (She continued to
follow music for the rest of her life.)
Amy’s childhood seemed to be divided between music
and school. She took pleasure in the musical afternoons
that Bella held in their home, while Wallace — or Algie
as he was affectionately called, his middle name being
Algernon — slipped off to play, unsupervised, along the
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banks of the Ottawa River. Shy by nature, Amy never
really enjoyed public school, although she managed quite
well. When the time came to write the final high school
exam she was sick and so received permission to write
the exam at home. Although she earned good marks, she
fretted that the authorities might think she had cheated
as she had not been supervised.
From the time he was about ten, Wallace’s dreams and
aspirations largely guided the family — not surprising,
as Bella had often told him that he was the man of the
house. While walking along an Ottawa street with his
mother one spring day, he caught sight of a doctor’s
brass plate outside his home. Turning to Bella, he told
her that he was going to have one of those plaques on
his house one day. In spite of this determination he
was boisterous and mischievous, much to the despair
of his mother and her brother-in-law David, who on
occasion visited from Vancouver. One evening Uncle
David and his young daughter Alix arrived in Ottawa on
the transcontinental train and took a horse-drawn cab
to Bella’s house. Upon arrival, the door of the carriage
burst open and young Algie threw himself in, landing at
the feet of his startled uncle and cousin and welcoming
them to Ottawa!
Although Wallace succeeded in his studies, graduating
from the University of Toronto in 1909 and entering
medical school, his propensity for prankish behaviour
continued. One evening after studying late, he talked his
friends into dressing up a laboratory skeleton in a pair of
trousers, shirt, tie, and coat and hat. They then carried
their macabre “companion” over to a nearby pub where
they propped him up in the window of a cab, which
they paid to wait just outside the entrance. Settling in
with some drinks, they passed the evening watching
the reactions of the often inebriated patrons as they
staggered into the street!
Meanwhile, eighteen-year-old Amy had left Ottawa in
mid-1908 for an extended visit to London and Europe.
Wallace’s
graduation
photo from
the University
of Toronto. I
call it “Staring
into the Future.”
Undated.
In those days any family who had the financial means
and a minimum of social connections arranged to send
their daughters to Europe for several months to acquire
a cultural background and intellectual polish. Amy was
fortunate in that her Uncle Dave (as he was affectionately
known to the family) and Aunt Annie offered to take
her along with their two younger daughters, Alix and
Isabel. After meeting up with the Wilson’s oldest daughter
Kathleen, who was attending finishing school in Dresden,
B ella , A lgie , and A my
*
25
Germany, they would all spend several months touring
Europe.18
This visit to Europe lasted a year and the four girls
had a wonderful time, although Amy suffered bouts of
homesickness and confessed in letters to her mother
that she sometimes felt like the poor relative — her aunt
and uncle were affluent. However, they went out of their
way to treat Amy as one of their daughters. After a few
weeks in London19 they departed for Florence, where they
stayed in the elegant and very expensive Pensione Villa
Trollope before renting an apartment for several months.
Amy took singing and piano lessons with some advanced
Amy and the
Wilsons on board
the ship bound
for Europe, 1908.
Left to right: Uncle
Dave, Aunt Annie,
Amy, and Isabel.
In front of Uncle
Dave is young
Alix, holding a
doll.
teachers and also became proficient in Italian. Her talent
for writing is very much apparent in the myriad of letters
she wrote to her mother and brother Algie.
(Undated, shortly after she arrived in Florence)
Italians are the noisiest people I ever came
across. They just love to shout and roar,
just to hear themselves. They must think it
fascinating. Kitty yesterday saw a man on the
street deliberately open his mouth and the next
moment he was singing at the top of his voice
— she nearly collapsed. . . . Every morning the
noise is awful. The roads are all cobblestones
— and it is nothing but rattle rattle, bang bang,
yell yell, hammer hammer. Just now a man in
the street is letting out a wonderful volume of
tone.
Casa Petrarca, Grand Canal, Venice
May 21, 1909
Here we are, dearest people, in Venice, the City
of our dreams!! I am too excited for words!
— It is all so perfectly heavenly — enchanting,
that all the adjectives descriptive, in English or
any other language would not suffice to tell you
how perfect it all is. I am sure that I shall never
be done rhapsodizing on “la bella Venezia,” the
18. Uncle Dave had another pressing but unspoken reason for the trip. He wanted to consult with European specialists about a disease — syphilis — he had contracted from a young woman whose baby he had delivered. Many years later Gordie Tupper, (David’s grandson) told me this; amused that this pillar of Vancouver
society should have contracted such an unacceptable disease.
19. Uncle Dave was sick during their time in London, and the girls took turns caring for him. Amy took the opportunity to ask her uncle for advice on what
Wallace should do once he graduated — work in Toronto or move out to Vancouver. He said that Wallace would have to make up his own mind.
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jewel of the sea. But I must do things in order
or my letters would be frightfully topsy-turvy.
Supposing they went backwards, or from the
middle to either end instead of circumspectly
commencing at “At two we took a train for. . .
etc.”
Well, at the station at Florence we had a rush,
for the train came in full from Rome . . . The
first part of the journey we passed through so
many stuffy tunnels, but after we left Bologna
and were refreshed by a lunch of sweet-biscuit
cake and cherries, Malaga wine, and ice
water from a thermos bottle, we felt that our
backbones were intact and that Venice really
was at the end of the way!
As the day wore on into evening and the
shadows began to fall over the Italian landscape
— a landscape of green and trees festooned and
trailing with grapevines — it was fascinating
for Kitty and me to stand arm in arm in the
open window and watch the “picture” as we
whizzed by — near Venice we passed through
the ancient town of Padua — Algie, do you still
remember Shakespeare? And at last we saw
beneath us the reflection of thousands of lights
in the water — and knew we were at last in
Venice!! We passed through the station gates
onto a platform — but instead of a dusty road,
clanging trams, and the shouts of cabbies — we
heard the soft slush of water as it washed over
the stone steps and SAW the black gondolas
coming up to the wharf, dark gondoliers in
Amy during
her stay in Italy,
1908/1909.
white blouses and caps — standing, bent to
the oars — altogether indescribable — only
to be felt and not written. All the gondolas
are black, some beautifully carved and
adorned. The gondolier stands at the back and
off you go — all our luggage in the front—
and we ourselves at the back, wide-eyed
B ella , A lgie , and A my
*
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