Chattaway stories

Alans Story

My grandfather, who lived in Wales, was a baker and an alcoholic. When my father was 14 my grandfather put him to work in a local coal mine, then took his earnings each week and drank them.  My father soon ran away from home and found his way to London. There he said he was 17 so he could join the Welsh Guards.  He married my mother, whose parents were German immigrants, when he was really 18 (but officially 21).  My mother had difficulty carrying a pregnancy to full term, so I was the only one of about 7 children to be born alive.

During WW2 my father served in the British Army in India and Egypt, earning several medals.  After the war he took a job in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and my mother and I moved there.  After high school in Zambia I went to university in South Africa, 1800 miles (2900km) from home.  Near the end of my third year my mother died, but my father kept it secret from me until after my final exam, in case it affected my marks.

After my mother's death my father closed our home in Zambia and visited relatives in Canada, where he fell in love with his brother's widow and married her.  This left me as a foreign student in South Africa with no home country, so I applied for permanent residence in South Africa. It was denied because I had participated in the movement against apartheid, so instead of permission to stay, I was given three weeks to leave the country.  This was devastating because now I had lost my family, friends, home country, and adopted country all in less than a year  I stayed with my aunt in Reading, UK and applied to emigrate to Canada.  I was accepted, and though I've lived and worked in many countries since then, I'm still based in Canada today