I have always enjoyed reading old letters between friends that you sometimes find in history books. It doesn't really matter who they were or what they discussed. But with the telephone we don't do much letter writing any more. Far better than a photograph; old letters give wonderful insights into what the lives of people were like at the time. I only wish I had some of my grandfather's and greatgrandfather's letters now, to know not only what they did but what they felt about their daily lives.

On christmas 1998, my daughter, Sheira, gave me a book entitled "Legacy, A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Personal History." What would anyone want to know about me? I suppose the same thing that I would have liked to have known about my ancestors. A leagacy I guess. So through my daughter's encouragement, here is a brief autobiography for the web pages. I promise to expand upon it every time I get a chance and hopefully I will be able to finish it.

The Formative Years: Birth to Age Eight

I was born Robert Llewellyn Hallam on July 6, 1945 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, about a month after the war in Europe was over and about a month before the war in the Pacific ended; right at the start of the "baby boom." Both my parents were involved in the war effort; my father, Harold Robert Hallam, was engaged in the building of secret floating harbours called "Mulberries" used during the D-Day landings in Normandy, and my mother, Jocelyn Marie Jones, worked in a munitions factory, as a "clippy" on the busses, but mostly as a cook.

I remember little of my first few years. Apparently my parents and I resided at my grandfather's home for a short time after I was born until post-war housing became available. It is reported that I was very much favoured by my grandfather, Robert William Hallam, and although the country was still on rations, I was the recipient of all the best parts of my grandfather's breakfasts, including all his bacon. I do remember my grandparent's back yard, in that it was grassed, fenced, and had a border of hollyhocks and other tall flowers.

My grandfather died whiel he was in Denmark on holdiday as a result of a cerebral hemorage, shortly after I was born. But one story from that time sticks with me. My grandmother Ethel May Hallam, found my grandfather's missing slippers, about two years after my grandfather had passed away, and long after we had moved to Park Avenue in Gosforth, right where I had hidden them, in the bottom of the grandfather clock. I also remember visiting my grandparent's graves before we moved to Canada, and seeing their small grave markers, which have since been replaced with proper headstones. Beyond those simple memories I have very few recollections of my very early yeas.

My memory of my preschool years is far more reliable as I approached the age of five and six. I often get brief flashes of playing on the golf course near the end of Park Avenue, running off with golf balls, exchanging rags for goldfish with the rag-man, splashing in mud puddles, capturing stray cats, collecting wood for "guy-fawkes" night, jumping off moving busses as they glided to a stop, and catching "sticklebacks" in the "burn"; a long-lasting interest in streams that apparently set the pattern for the rest of my life.

It seems to me that soon after I started school, which was about a three block walk to the southeast, I can clearly remember jumping into one puddle that was far deeper than I had expected, flooding my wellingtons and getting my short pants all wet. The reason I remember this particular incident was because of the embarrassment of sitting in school without my pants on, while they were placed on the register to dry.

I have relatively clear memories of my home on Park Avenue. I remember the common, an area of about one acre in area in front of our home. The common was boardered by a road and surrounded by red brick row houses on three sides and flats (or apartment blocks) on the fourth. After 55 years I remember the name of only one neighbour, that of Derek Stonehous, who lived at one corner of the common closest to our house. I remember the house was small, with a sculery painted two shades of green, a wash house separated from the house by a walk way, a small living room with fire place, a downstairs bathroom, a staircase for sliding down, and a tiny upstairs bedroom. I know my parents had a separate bedroom but I just don't seem to remember it.

We played a lot on the common; cricket, football, cowboys and Indians, I'm the King of the Castle, and that sort of thing. On more than one occassion a cricket ball went through a row house window, in which case everyone ran like hell. I remember a fireworks going off accidently in my left hand one guy-fawkes night, leaving a nasty burn. I also clearly remember my father trying to fix an old Renault, which he purchased with his inheritance after my grandfather had passed away and which he had parked on the common. And I remember my father getting into a fist fight with a neighbour over the improper use of the common.

Although I had a brother, Richard, only 18 months younger than I, my first stable and long-lasting memories of him didn't come until we were three and four years old when the oldest of my two sisters, Rhonda, was born. I recall the horrible experience of having a nanny, who I considered a battle ax, look after us until my mother was able to resume the role of mother. It was around this time that my brother and I contracted measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, and other childhood diseases with depedable regularity. It seems we spent many days suffering through each episode together in bed, shooting matchsticks from little cannons. But again one of my most embarrassing moments of my life was that of my mother insisted on showing more than one of the women in the neighbourhood the one chickenpox I had on my penis. And of course there was the one bout of hair lice we picked up at school and had to have the dreaded black soap treatment. That, along with cod liver oil, and greased paper sown to the inside our vests, all had to be endured.

Short woolen pants were the worst. They became stiff and rough in the extremely cold weather you get in northern England, and they seem to rubb your skin until it was red and then cut into your legs just above the knee until your legs became so soar that you couldn't walk anymore. And to have to wear "daddies long pants" was indeed a terrible insult.

From our house you could see down much of Park Avenue which ran east from our house to the Great North Road which ran in a north/south direction. There was a store, I belive a convenience type store with post office, called Harry Eblitts, located at the corner, where I was treated to the "Beeno" comic book now and then. And there was one occassion when I took my tricycle and crossed the Great North Road on my own to visit my grandparents, without my mother knowing. I got lost and that, I remember, seemed to have resulted in a collosal search and a lot of consternation.

I don't recall my father spending much time playing with me, but I do remember him teaching me to ride a blue two-wheel bike, building a miniture train that Richard and I could sit in, making place settings for friends, and making large souvenier keys for wedding presents.

The most profound memories of those days were visits to the beach at Tynemouth, Whitley Bay, and a one week holiday in a caravan at Walkworth, where I was totally enthralled with the sand dunes, collecting coal from the beach, and playing amongst the remains of the old World War II coastal defences. I'm almost sure there was a portion of a castle at Whitley Bay or Walkworth, a round tower, draw bridge and gate, but I have seen no reference to it anywhere.

It doesn't seem long after I started Gosforth Park Primary at the age of 5, when the family made arrangements to emigrate to Canada. I had already started cub scouts and was learning to fold the scarf, tie knots, and recite oaths. Around the same time, I recall recieving packages from abroad filled with things you couldn't buy in England due to rationing. And I recall my father building special boxes in which to ship his tools to Canada, and I recall him painting the address in white on the outside of each box.

In those days, we travelled by train from Newcastle to London, and from London to Southampton, where we boarded the HMS Cythia, a Cunard passanger liner scheduled for her last transatlantic voyage. The year was 1953, and our passing through London coincided with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in early June of that year, as I can distinctly remember the streets decorated with red, white, and blue banners. I was 7 at the time, approaching my 8th birthday. After first stopping at La Havre, France, our seven-day ocean voyage across the Atlantic to the port of Quebec, is filled with memories of exploring the ship, icebergs, the banks of the St Lawrence, and the CN train station at Quebec City, where the family boarded a sleeper train bound for the outpost of Fort Langley, B.C. Visions of that whole episode, the ocean voyage, Winnipeg, making the beds each night, the open praries, the rockies, and stopping at Mount Robson, still linger in my mind. Of course it was all very exciting for a young boy. But both my brother and I were very disappointed to learn that the real cowboy and Indians had disappeared long ago.

I recall ariving at Fort Langley and getting off the train dressed in a white shirt, kilt, kilt pin, and sporan in which we were dressed to impress our grandparents, I presume, and the long ride in a Model T Ford from Fort Langley to our grandparent's home located about four miles south of Langly Praire. My grandparent's names were Edwin and Matilda Mayo.

My Childhood in Canada: Years Eight to Twelve

I celebrated my 8th birthday in Canada, exploring my grandparent's farm, milking goats, picking potatoes, making hay, and finding new friends, while my father seached for a job and permanent home. We arrived during the summer holidays and I recall it being extremely hot since we were not yet climatized. I recall playing with a girl called Jenifer who lived next door, and I can remember my brother, getting drunk one very hot morning. We had been sent out with a bottle of water each to pick potatoes with our grandfather, something we were not at all used to. Not long after we arrived at the back fourty my brother, Richard, started drinking grandfather's water since he had already finished his own. Well that bottle of water wasn't water at all, it was high grade cider. My brother staggered around for a good part of the remainder of the day.

And I can't forget to mention the time Richard and I got a hold of a goat in the barn and tried milking it as we had seen our grandfather do it often. It wasn't long before we had milk squirted all over the barn floor, which we had to hide with straw.

I was called a Mary-Ann by my grandmother because I preferred to hang around the house. Getting used to Canada was difficult. It occurs to me now that it was the hygene I couldn't get use to. The bathroon was quite a step down from what we had in England, goats milkd smelled bad, flies buzzed around the kitchen, clutter covered the table where bread was being made, and you couldn't tell if the dark spots in the bread were raisins or flies. And summer time was, I guess, the time for canning, which seemed to go on constantly.

Before the school year started we moved into a rambling old house with fruit trees and an old barn, in a small village outside of Langley called Murrayville. I think our welcome at our grandmother's had worn out by then, and a lot of animosity had built up in a very short time. Murrayville at that time was a very small market village, where you could still find a horse trough, one general store (called Porters) that carried everything, a post office where everyone met, two churches, old oak trees, and a two room elementary school. It didn't take long before my brother and I were fully assimilated Canadians, even loosing our English accents, along with school uniforms, and short pants. But even in those days I wasn't far from a stream or pond of some kind.

My brother Richard and I started school at Murrayville Elementary and I was placed in Grade 2. In fact both Richard and I were in the same class since there were several grades per room. Miss Berry was our teacher. I recall having new pants for school and one day after school I tagged along with another boy to go frogging. It didn't take long for me to get soaking wet and covered with mud up to around my waist. The reason that this event sticks in my mind was the reception I got from my mother when I arrived home with my new pants covered in mud. She was livid.

Getting the belt on a daily basis around that time seemed to be the norm. I can remember my father constantly taking off his belt for what seemed to be a new infraction of the rules every day, and it seemed that he used it with a lot of vigour. Of course I dreaded these events. On one occassion I decieded to avoid the belt entirely by jumping from my bedroom window to the artesian well located about six feet away from the side of the house and slide down it to freedom. Well the belting I was to get was foregone on that particular occassion only, since I'd hurt myself so much in the jump. On another occassion I pulled the belt away from my father and he used his hand instead. I found out that his hardened hand was a lot worse.

Our first Hallowe'en was a memorable event. Since we didn't know anything about it, my brother and I watched from the upstairs window to see what would happen. Every goblin except one avoided our house entirely. But when the one masked-face kid knocked "trick or treat" Richard and I dashed down stairs to see what would happen next. My mother invited him in and offered him a great selection of cookies, which he proceeded to choose several of each. He silently put about a dozen of them in his bag and abruptly left. Well was that all there was to it?

At some time that fall my sister Rita was born, but I don't seem to be able to recollect much about it. I believe that she was born in Langley Memorial Hospital but I'm not absolutely sure. Although I remember holding her, I have been the one accused of dropping her as a baby, which resulted in a ganglion on her forehead that had to be surgically removed, I can't, for the life of me, remember that happening at all.

I may be mixing years but it seemed as though that year (1953) played out with a few other memories of being extremely poor since my father had great difficulty getting work. In fact I believe my father actually contemplated joining the Canadian Army and serving in the Korean War as a stop gap, but he was talked into abandoning the idea by our local reverand. Over the winter, I recall collecting firewood from a vacant lot not too far away, clearing snow from the driveway, and trudging through the snow to school.

Ms. Berry, our teacher, married in the spring and became Mrs. Hope. She had fat knees and we boys loved trying to sneek a peek hoping to see more than her knees by pretending to drop things on the floor and looking under her desk when we picked them up. But I'll never forgive her for conviscating my marbles after dropping them during class. She kept them all year and never returned them, which I shall elaborate on a little later. I recall being very embarrased on one occassion for having great difficulty in reading aloud in class. And at one point the class was involved in a discussion of local issues in which one girl brought up the issue of the ugly derelict barn, an eye-soar, that sat in decay near the turn off or entrance to Murrayville. Some of the other children, who knew to whom the barn belonged, tried to hush her up. Yes it all came out that the barn and land was owned by the Berry family, the very Berry family to which Mrs. Hope belonged. Small town stuff for sure.

The rest of the school year seemed to be taken up by my trying to use the strait pen. We all had an ink well, a bottle of ink, blotters, and a red handled strait pen. My work always looked a terrible mess. But I, along with the other boys, got an enormous amount of pleasure in sticking the strait pen nib into the wood plank floor and dipping the ends of braids of the girl in front of us into the ink well.

Spring and summer eventually returned, but before school closed there were two events that stand out in my mind. At one point I recall putting my hand around a tree and accidently grabbing a squirrl. That surprised the squirrl as much as it surprised me, but it does highlight the pastoral upbrinning that I grew up in. The second event was the arrival of a couple of new kids in class. Richard seemed to make friends with them right away, but not me. One of the kids persisted in mouthing some words I couldn't hear, day after day. And day after day, I ignored him. Until eventually, and I'm not sure how long this went on, he came over to me and said "I'm your cousin". That was my first introduction to my uncle Bernardino Dias' family.

Shortly after school closed, I had it in my mind to retrieve my marbles that Mrs. Hope had conviscated. I found a broken window to the school basement and climbed in, being still quite small. Went upstairs to my old classroom, opened the tearchers desk drawer; the one I knew held the marbles. To my surprise there were a whole host of marbles; many more than mine alone. So I proceeded to fill my pockets. And climbed back out the broken window through which I had originally entered.

I was playing marbles at home later that day, when my mother questioned me on where I got all the marbles, and I told her that they were mine and how I liberated them from Mrs. Hope's desk. Well, bad move. My mother told me that I had to return to school and put the marbles back in Mrs. Hope's desk. So I dutifully committed B & E a second time that day with a great deal of reluctance. And I never did get my marbles back.

We moved from there to an apartment located over a storefront on the TransCanada Highway. I remember very little of that period of my life except that I had started to build forts in trees. One tree house, a masterpiece, was unceremonially ripped down by my angry father, when he had to get access to the wheel at the far end of the washing line.

Our neighbours on one side were the Stevensons, and on the other a Dutch immigrant family called Mantle. Stan Stevenson was trampled by a bull that he had ringed and was crippled. The Dutch family, the Mantles, were commercial flower gardeners and raised and shipped daffodil bulbs to Holand. I recall them wearing wooden shoes and sizing daffodil bulbs most every day. Their young son used to speak a small amount of English and repeat each phrase in Dutch (Frie frow - Neighbour lady).

While were at that location my father got a job working at a small business establishment accross the streat that made neon signs, and I recall playing games with kids in the neighbourhood.

Some time after that, and I can't remember if it was years or months, my father purchased a house on five forested arcres in south Langley. The address was 2055 Carvalth Road; now 200th Street. This was no ordinary house. It was a four-room log cabin with virtually no windows or doors to speak of, certainly no plumbing, no central heating, and no kitchen facilities whatsoever. It had an outhouse which we refused to use and a open-sided wood shed. Actually when I look back on it now, I don't know what my father was thinking, except that maybe he fancied himself a pioneer, a pilgrim, or a homesteader. Who knows? He was far to over extended with four children and one salary, provided he was working. In doing so, he condemed us to a lot of years of hardship and poverty, which definately molded my attitudes, personality, and ways of thinking which lasted for the rest of my life.

Rather than starting afresh and building a new home a short distance away, my father started fixing up the old log cabin, adding kitchen cabinets, putting in doors and windows, and eventually adding a wood burning stove in both the livingroom and kitchen. The sink was a bowl set in the counter top. I was responsible for cutting wood, pumping water and bringing the wood and water into the house. Floors had to be leveled and windows and doors put in. But it wasn't until much later that we actually got an inside bathroom. To get that we had to install a septic tank and drainage field, a pumphouse over the well, an automatic pump for the well, piping into the house, heating coil in the fireplace, and a hot water tank behind the stove. Even then winters were difficult since everything between the well and the house frequently froze and had to be thawed out with hot water. Now that I look back on it, my life through those years was extremely hard and all taken up with helping my father every evening and every weekend, or going to school. But somehow we did seem to find time for other pursuits since we didn't have television.

I attended a new one room elementary school, Glenwood Elementary, which was about 3 miles away. A long walk in any event. My teacher was Mrs. Schriber, an old bitty who, it seemed, had been there for years. All 6 grades were in one classroom; a row for each grade with increasingly bigger desks going from grade one up to grade six. The older boys (Denis Dingual and Denis Walker) were envied monitors who had the job of bringing in the wood, tending the stove, cleaning the blackboard, or ringing the hand-held bell. And there were outside toilets at school too; a two-holers, one marked boys and one marked girls. Newspaper squares were hung on a nail for toilet paper.

There are three stories about my time in elementary school that will highlight my days there. The first has to do with "Health Check." The girl at the front of every row had to check each child behind her to ensure they had a cleanex and a comb, and that thier fingernails were clean and their hair combed. She would then report her findings to the teacher. The girl at the front of my row was a little blond prissy type called Mary Ann Esaw. And I, of course, had old clothes, gotten more dirty from picking huckleberries or a whole host of things during the walk to school, failed to have combed hair, and always had dirty fingernails from helping my father. As a consequence, Ms. Priss's report, and I quote word for word since it is burned in to my memory, "Bob Hallam is the dirtiest person in the row again today".

My second story deals with "Spelling". Now I have always been a bad speller, and it seems as though nothing is going to change that, even the computer's spellchecker can't deal with my creative spelling style. Today we can get away with it by calling it Net Spelling. But as a boy, I can remember that we had these government issued Spellers; a small thin red book that I hated. We had, I believe, 10 words to spell correctly each week. But I managed a 100% failure rate in that there was always at least one spelling mistake, and more often numerous spelling mistakes. Punishment:- Mrs. Schriber would demand that I hold out my hands, palms down, and she would proceed to slap the backs of my hands three times each with a wooden ruler.

But Mrs Schriber did have one redeming moment. One day she realized that I didn't know how to play baseball, and didn't take part in the lunch hour scrub like the other boys. So she took me up to home plate, stood behind me, held my hands on the bat, and showed me how to swing and run to bases. From there I picked up the accepted rules and protocol myself by osmosis, and worked my way up the pecking order from there.

It was approximately this same time that our next door neighbour, Mary Nielsen, who was part Indian and a severe alcoholic, died suddenly of alcohol induced liver poisoning whiel she was sleeping on the couch. She was a rough woman who could hold her own in a fist fight with her husband, Ray Nielsen, who was a logger and away much of the time. They had at least five young children. The three oldest were called Ronny, Anna, and Armold, all at oour own ages which we played with a good deal of the time. Mary Nielsen would have a taxi deliver a bottle(s) of Navy Rum periodically and appear completely sober even during the heaviest of binges. And when Ray returned home, I think the fighting was related to her drinking. All of the children were either adopted or placed in foster homes.

A good deal of my early sexual education came from Ronny and Anna, since they frequently passed on either what they heard, or more likely, what they saw. Anna would gladdly show you that she didn't have a penis like her brothers, and that was of course very interesting to me and all the other boys who conducted a close inspection.

Brian Jarvis, the son of Norman and Ester Jarvis, was I suppose a good friend of Richard and I. They were from Hull, England and my parents visited the Jarvis' often and played canasta for hours at a strech. But that was kind of an odd childhood friendship in that I never really formed much of a bond with Brian. He was short, funny looking kid, who bragged a lot, and was somewhat a mothers boy. He eventually ended up joing the Canadian Navy but I don't know what happened to him after that. Our two families spent a week together one summer in a rented cabin at Point Roberts. On one occassion we preformed a skit for Mr. Price's class and we sometimes had fun daring each other to run around Brian's front yard in the nude, and in full view of the neighbourhood. But there isn't much else to recall.

We lived accross the street from the Moores. They raised guinea hens which wandered all over the neighbourhood and continually squaked a shrill screach, (that's the best I can describe it), as well as pigs and a couple of cows. We bought our milk from them and I was often told to go over and pick it up. They had a blond haired daughter called Barbara Moore, who thought herself a queen and regarded me with total contempt. Her mother sometimes teased her and called out to her that I was at waiting at the back door when I showed up to collect the milk. Barbara would say something quite nasty, not knowing that I could hear, and the nastiness was sometimes quite an embarrassment to her mother. But I didn't care. I didn't like her either.

We had a dark brown dog called Rufus. He was a faithful pet and protected all of the kids in our family. On one occassion I took him to the fall fair and entered him in a fast eating contest. The judges placed cans of freshly opened dog meat into dishes in front of each dog. Each dog was allowed one sniff and the owners were to hold them back until the start gun was fired. Our dog which seldom got real canned dog food, grabbed a big mouthful when he was allowed the one sniff, and beat every other dog hands down, by gulping the remainder after the start gun was fired. From that I won a free flight on a small Cesna out of Langley Airport. We flew over our house, picking out the landmarks here and there. It was my first flight and quite a thrill.

We were about ten or eleven years old at about the time we reached grade five and six at Glenwood Elementary, and Mrs. Schriber had been replaced by Mr. Price, a younger university educated teacher. It was about that same period that we loved to make the girls scream, and we would chase them, until one day they reported us to Mr. Price. Brian, Richard, and I were hauled up before him, in his office no less, for attempting to kiss the girls on the way home. We were told to leave that sort of thing to the older boys. Fearful that we were going to get the strap (corporal punishment in those days) we said nothing but gladdly shook our heads in agreement, and off we went.

But it was those same girls who used to talk us into playing spin the bottle and playing truth or consequences. And I distinctly remember it was the girls who preferentially used kisses as the consequences. To top that off, it was Mary Ann Esaw, yes the very same Mary Ann Esaw, who advised me that she was tired of the small pecks on the cheek and demanded that I start giving her TV kisses. But I wasn't doing that in front of everybody eles, so it was behind the trees from then on. She was fairly pretty at eleven, but I remember her looks were all down hill from there. The last I saw of her, she was wearing cats-eye shaped glasses and white peddle-pushers that characterize the late 50's; an outfit you sometimes still see worn by very old, way out of date, women. It was that same summer or year that I got involved with a number of teenybopper romances. There was a Sharon Muir, who developed boobs fairly early and would be considered a little tart, and a couple of other girls I can't remember now. But I soon discovered that the girls were way ahead of me and only practicing for bigger things, and that did hurt somewhat.

I think it was also that year that we camped at Whiterock for a week and set up our tent near a family from Wonnock called Hall. I remember a steamy, well actually a heart throb romance with their daughter, Carol Hall. It was definately puppy love but short lived. We visited them about a month later, but the romance was definately over by then. I don't think she knew how to handle the situation and acted rather nastily toward me. Ah! Such are the ways of the heart.

The last summer before highschool was very hot and I found a couple of jobs picking strawberries and then beans, but didn't make much. Like most summers it was taken up raising rabbits, growing vegetables, picking blackberries, or cherries, and other things to fill the freezer. Following the lead of other kids, we started collecting cascara bark and dried it for use in making a medicine. We had quite a stack by the end of the summer, but I never did find out who actually bought the stuff.

Near the end of summer and about a day or two before school started again, I recall laying in a haystack with Richard and Brian watching sheet lightning that started far over the horizon and took about an half hour to reach us. And it was about that time that we got black and white television, my reading abruptly came to an end, as did my pre-teen years. Things were about to get even harder.

My Teenage Years: Years Twelve to Eighteen

My teenage years were not the best of times, although when I hear specific rock and roll music from the late 50's and mid 60's, it can conjur up some fond memories. I guess one would say that my teenage years were taken up mostly by work, school, and girlfiends.

Because we were so poor, and I being the oldest child, it was made clear to me that I was expected to carry my share of the load. Even from the age of twelve, I bought all my own cloths and all my own school supplies. I worked endlessly for my father, either on construction projects that he was involved in, on what seemed like the never ending work around the house, or additions to the house. I even tried my hand a farming. And I never failed to go after and hold down the best weekend or summer jobs in the neighbourhood.

Jobs that I had Tam tar and gravel roofing (daughter Carman Tam), Cohn Poultry Farms, Smashing up the car when I was 16. Girlfriends, Carol Nundal, Lynn Holding, Sheira Drobot, Diane Meadows,

More to come. I'm negotiating with old girl friends on just howmuch detail I can include.

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