To the City

Vancouver, BC

Archive Canada: 1940-1959

Heading Home

S Frank Bruce and his two brothers Maurice and Geoffrey immigrated to Canada from England in 1925, bent on making a new life for themselves. They took an agricultural orientation course at Mc Donald College near Montreal in the fall and spring of 1924-1925. The Canadian Government and the Canadian Pacific Railway were subsidizing both the passage from Britain and the agricultural course to encourage young Englishmen to settle the west. Maurice probably returned to England shortly after completing the course, for he was a young man of delicate nature and not well suited to the rigours of Canada, at least to the rigours of rural Canada. Geoffrey and Frank headed west after college and found work in southern Alberta bringing in the harvest in the fall of 1926. (see the tale ‘Prairie Fire!).

Frank and Geoffrey continued west after the harvest arriving in Vancouver in late November. Jobs were few and far between and by Christmas Day, nothing had materialized for Frank. Discouraged, he decided to head home to England. Chatting with a man at the White Lunch Cafe on Hastings St in Vancouver, he learned of a cheap way to get home to England — work his passage as a cattle man. “When you get to the Montreal docks,” the stranger said, “find a man they call ‘the Swede.’ He’ll fix you up — if ya grease his palm.”

Frank’s Uncle Ernest was the Director of Exhibitions for the Canadian Pacific Railway and might well have secured crucial rail tickets for Frank. But on Christmas Day, he was off. Frank found the Swede and boarded the cattle boat, the Manchester Producer. The weather was brutal and the prospect of heading into the North Sea in January was less than cheery. But this would get him home to jolly old England. See Tales Adrift for Frank’s account.