War bride from Auchinleck to Canada

 by Laurie Ann March

29 December 1944

My mother, Janet Jack  was known affectionately as Jenny and born at Templeton Place (nicknamed Mulligan’s Mansions) in Auchinleck on 15 June1926. Her mother died in childbirth a few years later so Jenny was raised by her father Robert and her Aunt Bella. When she was a teenager, she met a Canadian soldier from a small mining town named Worthington, near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. His name was William Henry Langman, and he was stationed in England. Langman was acquainted with her father and older brother and had come to visit. Langman was known to his friends and other members of the RCA as Harry, but Jenny always called him Bill. 

Bill and Jenny didn’t really like each other when they first met and on top of that he had a fiancée in Canada. He did two tours of Italy, and he would send word to Scotland whenever possible. During Bill’s deployment Jenny’s father asked if she would take over the task of writing to Bill’s mother and fiancée with updates and Jenny reluctantly agreed. Bill always visited Auchinleck when he was on leave. Eventually, the engagement to the Canadian lady was broken off and he and Jenny fell in love. He proposed to Jenny from the top of the Ballochmyle Viaduct in Ayrshire. She would tease him later by saying that she should have jumped instead of accepting his proposal. 

at Ballochmyle Viaduct

In 1944 Bill applied for permission from the military to marry Jenny and they were married just before Hogmanay that year. In the summer of 1945, despite his request to remained stationed in the UK, he was shipped home to Canada for repatriation. Jenny was pregnant by then and her passage did not take place until February 1946. She travelled from Liverpool to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada with a 3-month-old baby on the Scythia, with hundreds of other war brides. The journey was not a smooth one. Waves during the fierce Atlantic storms were splashing over A-deck and this made both her and the baby quite ill. 

 

Once they arrived in Halifax the war brides disembarked and as they walked from Pier 21 into the city, a brass band played “Here Comes the Brides.” She said it was awful and that she felt like a spectacle—like they were a herd of cattle. A few days later, Jenny left Halifax with baby John on a train to Ontario, and they ended up in the tiny isolated rural village of Springford, ON. Springford was in the “snowbelt” and experiencing the thick of a Canadian winter was quite a shock.

Life in farming community of Springford was not easy for Jenny, nor was living with her mother-in-law who treated her like she was not good enough for Bill. It wasn’t just dealing with culture shock from being thrust into rural Ontario life; Jenny was also trying to reconcile the differences between her expectations and the reality. It didn’t help that Bill was dealing with the ramifications of what he experienced as a soldier and trying to repatriate into civilian life. Being a war bride was not as romantic as it sounded and Canadian women were sometimes unkind. Bill had something akin to PTSD, and that added to the challenges. 

At one point, she was so lonely, heartbroken, and homesick that she wrote her father to arrange passage back home. He convinced her to stay, and she persevered. Eventually, Jenny and Bill decided that he would take a position as a correctional officer in the city of Guelph, and they moved into a small house near the city’s downtown. Their life in Guelph improved their situation and reduced the social isolation that Jenny had been experiencing. 

The Langmans remained in the Guelph area for close to forty years until Bill passed away in June 1987. Jenny spent her remaining years in Wasaga Beach, Ontario. Jenny had five children between November 1945 and November 1968. They had a very happy marriage despite the rocky start. She was an artisan and made everything from clothing to beautiful heirloom quilts and embroidered works. Jenny shared her Scottish traditions and cooking with friends and family and was legendary for her shortbread. It was always important to her that these traditions be passed down to the next generation. Her life was full of sadness, and she outlived three of her five children. She was determined to live to the fullest, despite the grief, and carried on with grace and strength. 

Jenny never returned to Auchinleck, but her older brother Jim and her best friend Jessie, would visit every few years. She always asked them to bring treats from her homeland for the children. Her nephew and his family still reside in Scotland, and they came to see her several times before she passed away in January 2013 at the age of 86. 

Jenny never forgot her Scottish roots and never lost her accent or sense of adventure. Scottish war brides like Jenny, were resilient young women who changed the fabric of Canada for the better.