Photographs – Page 3 – A Family History in Letters

Summer 1964

The summer of 1964 was packed with activities and events. The major event was the wedding at the beginning of August, and everything else had to be fitted in around it. The first activity for the children was camp. Now I know that countless North Americans look upon their time at camp as idyllic childhood summer fun that they joyfully repeated year after year- but such was not the Costain experience. Going to camp was sold to us by our parents as a thing we ought to try- it would only be two weeks out of the summer, we would be able to have swimming lessons and canoe, we would have fun with friends. My friend Janet’s mother was working and her English parents probably thought this would be a chance to have a holiday instead of being home alone all day. But because of the time crunch, Linda and Janet were sent to the Anglican Church youth camp with girls 2-4 years younger than they were, with a couple of the mothers from the Women’s Auxiliary of our church working there too, for reassurance. We were miserable, two teens (but not teens old enough to be counsellors) in a sea of 9 year-olds, divided into wooden cabins full of bunkbeds, herded from dining hall to fireside singsong in a cloud of gloom. The activities were unexciting, the cultural appropriation of ‘Camp Pontiac’ was painful, the religion classes boring, the swimming a disaster of shrieking splashing little girls, there was not enough free time for reading! (and there was an enticing library) and the food- not what we were used to, somehow, coming from English backgrounds. Charlie’s Boy Scout Cub Camp seemed less well organized- when he returned home with a pack of wet, muddy, and mouldy clothes, it appeared from his account that he and other inexperienced tent mates were abandoned to set up their equipment themselves, and had been flooded out at the beginning, spending the rest of the fortnight in soggy surroundings. (Strangely, this was not enough to turn Charlie off camping- he’s just returned from a Labour Day weekend camping trip in Algonquin Park. It didn’t rain till Monday.)

When we returned from camp we were upset to find that we had missed the beginning of visits from relatives gearing up for the pre-wedding excitement. It was always fun having people to stay and we were glad to be home. John had completed his theology degree and was ordained, Sharon had trained as a teacher, Lorne had already been teaching that year, as were his parents, and he and Liz had baby Debbie who was adorable. Charlie and I had swimming lessons again and then in August, we were off to Brantford for the wedding, to be combined with a trip to Stratford to see King Lear, The Marriage of Figaro, and Yeoman of the Guard.

For the wedding, Cyn had made herself a dress out of a beautiful sari that the Kalras had been commissioned to buy years before in India. It was shot silk, a rich green in one light, brown in the other, with the ends embroidered with gold thread. Cyn took those ends for a wrap, and the dress from the middle yardage with the gold embroidery at the hem, and with it she wore a wonderful hat of long narrow iridescent blue and green feathers, close to the head. Merle, the mother of the groom, had a more commanding hat, pink petals outstanding, and Auntie Lily from Toronto represented the older generation. (John’s charge as a minister was ‘out West’ so the Costain grandparents, and uncles and families, could see the newlyweds once they had moved closer.) There were lots of Lees from the bride’s side, two red-headed younger brothers being groomsmen along with John’s two brothers, to escort the bride’s attendants. I was moderately pleased with my green dress, had white gloves and shoes (and nylon stockings) and a floaty headdress that blew about in the breeze. The bouquet was a surprise, being white carnations- with half of them dyed green- as if nature did not produce enough greenery for a bouquet! But I was thrilled wth a bridesmaids’ gift of a string of pearls to wear, and kept my opinion of the flowers to myself. The weather was lovely, the service went beautifully with all of us doing our parts properly, the pictures in one of Brantford’s riverside parks looked good afterwards and were relatively painless to take, and the reception was full of family and we all had fun. Then the Costains went off to Stratford and had a marvellous time.

We had been going to Stratford since I was 8, and Cec and Cyn had always bought tickets off to the side of the thrust stage down in the first couple of rows, thinking that the children would be fascinated by the actors brushing by them to enter and exit even if the plot was beyond them. (It never was, what with the summary in the programme and the play in front of us.) So on this occasion, Gloucester’s eyes were gouged out realistically above and in front of us, and I bet I was not the only one hiding my eyes! The Gilbert and Sullivan productions were always marvellous, and The Marriage of Figaro has, from that summer on, always been my favourite opera. It was a happy time and a lovely holiday.

When we returned to Ottawa, Merle and Dix joined us for a visit, and brought Liz and Debbie to stay with her family in Ottawa. I had a birthday, became a teenager, and then a new adventure would begin- Gloucester High School.

December 1963 to June 1964

The school year continued , and Christmas approached with the usual concerns of overseas parcels, cards, baking, and Charlie’s birthday. The plan to spend Christmas in Brantford was scotched, along with Charlie’s birthday festivities, when he came down with shingles- a connection from our earlier bout of chicken pox in 1957. However, he recovered in time for us to visit the Moors for New Year which was fun for the children staying up late watching old movies with their cousin Bruce, and necessary for the adults to discuss plans for the summer wedding of the oldest cousin John with Sharon- who had asked Linda to be a bridesmaid!

The winter of 1964 involved fundraising events for the church- Cyn’s Cookery Demonstration for adults, and for the young people a Sleigh Ride. This was not a happy, cozy, ‘jingle bells’ experience in my opinion. There was no ‘one-horse open sleigh’, instead a pair of horses dragged a flatbed strewn with straw on runners slowly though fields covered with knee-deep snow. The jolly companions on the wagon competed in shoving their weaker ’friends’ off the wagon into the snow, forcing them to run to the point of exhaustion to try to scramble on to the conveyance, sometimes aided by compassionate friends, or repelled by nastier bullies. The bridge of Linda’s nose received a lifelong bump when she was helpfully pulled on – along with several more victims who ended up on top of her and her glasses. The hot chocolate served at the end of the ride was poor compensation for the experience.

At school there were preparations for the musical play to be performed in the spring, and at home more personal excitement. It had been arranged that Linda would meet Sharon in Toronto during Spring Break to join the other bridal attendants for dress shopping. An air ticket was bought for Linda’s first flight alone- and I can clearly remember how I was dressed for that trip. I had a grey suit with a jacket and pleated skirt. With it I wore a white pillbox hat, white gloves (both nylon with stretchy elastic) and white socks with black shoes. John and Sharon met me at the airport and we joined the other junior bridesmaid and Sharon’s two adult friends at a bridal shop and proceeded to try on dresses. I was shy- I only knew Sharon of the party, and uttered no opinions on the outfits, but it was finally agreed that we would be wearing pretty green full- skirted dresses with white accessories. I went to Brantford with the party for the weekend, and presumably they put me back on the plane in Toronto, and I returned home with great relief. I wish there existed a letter giving Cyn’s take on the excursion (I expect I had plenty of opinions to express about it once I was home) but I remember nothing more. Probably Cyn had agreed to make sure my dress was fitted properly when it arrived, and now we just had to wait for the summer.

Easter was at the end of March, and Cyn’s birthday followed, with celebratory cards from her closest friend in England, Nancy Heslop.

The school play that year “Asses’ Ears” was a musical telling the story of the Greek King Midas, not involving his golden touch, but his later offence to the god Apollo’s music, punished with donkey’s ears. He hid these under turbans but his barber knew the secret, and whispered the news to the corn- and the growing corn rustled the news to the reapers. Grade 7s and 8s were involved in the singing chorus- and Linda and her friends were also the secondary singing-and-dancing barbers, with a jolly song “Midas has got asses’ ears” to perform. It was presented in the auditorium of the new high school that had just been built, and the Grade 8 students were very interested to see the school they would be going to after their graduation in June.

In June, there were exams, we passed, got our report cards, and Linda would be going into Grade 9 in the high school built beside the new bypass, the Queensway, a four-lane highway designed to relieve Ottawa’s traffic congestion, and link the growing suburbs being built east and west of the city.

Graduation from Grade 8 was a rite of passage that involved one of Cyn’s most successful dresses for Linda- a white sleeveless dress with a panel down the front, embroidered with pink rosebuds. This was the first time I wore nylon stockings- with garter belt and suspenders attached (pantyhose had not been invented then)- to be followed by the second time later that summer, as bridesmaid. I felt almost adult- I would be going to high school, and when I started there I would be a teenager.

Summer 1963

The Costain’s summer holiday was a road trip to Quebec City as tourists, followed by the exciting scientific event of a solar eclipse on July 20th.

We explored the old city of Quebec, stared at the Plains of Abraham where the British took over Canada- big, flat, and boring except for drilling soldiers- (by Grades 7 and 8 we had studied Canadian history covering the 18th century over and over again, while the 20th was never mentioned), took a river cruise on the St Lawrence by the Isle d’Orleans, ate yummy food, and enjoyed staying in hotels.

On the 20th of July we were on our way home, and left the highway for the back roads to find a spot that Cec had determined would be ideal for viewing the eclipse. Charlie’s telescope had been packed in the car of course, and we stopped at a farm outside Montreal and asked permission to set it up. There were no crowds, no one at the farm seemed interested, so in the laneway we had a solitary viewing of the phenomenon with the special lens, with time for each of us to see the sun disappearing as our surroundings became darker and darker, then reappeared. [I recommend the NFB film ‘Eclipse at Grand’Mère’ on YouTube which shows the interest the public had in this solar eclipse- and the boxy cars, and be-gloved ladies using their telescopes.]

Plus, at the farm, there was a puppy!

The rest of the summer was more local, with Cyn and Cec’s wedding anniversary at the end of July and Granny and Grandpa Costain staying with us for the rest of the summer.

In August, Linda’s birthday was celebrated with a family excursion to Upper Canada Village. I can’t help thinking that much of the ‘old- time’ pioneer atmosphere that the village attempted to re-create, such as the horse and buggy, must have seemed quite familiar to my grandparents, but there was a picnic table and birthday cake and Linda was 12!

A few weeks later, school started in September, with Linda in Grade 8, the top grade in elementary school, and Charlie in Grade 7. To get to school, they walked out the back door, through their garden past the old apple tree and Cec’s vegetable garden and compost pile, and crossed a fallow field to the highway. On the other side of the highway, there was a path down the edge of another field, then their church hall, and the school playgrounds. It took them 10 minutes, rather than the 30 or 40 minutes on the school bus which took them on a tour down to the river and back picking up students- and occasionally longer on icy winter days when it could not climb up the steep hill on the return journey!

A bit later in the fall, the family took the grandparents to Kingsmere, one of our favourite places to take tourists. William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s 10th Prime Minister, was an eccentric man, whose personal beliefs in the occult only became known after his death, but one thing well known was his estate in Quebec, 24 km north of Ottawa in the Gatineau Hills. He bought this acreage in the 1920s and over the next 30 years, developed and landscaped it into a showplace modelled on English country estates, with lawns, hedges, trees, fake ruins, picturesque buildings, attractive vistas, stone statues… After his death, the Mackenzie King Estate became a lovely park with buildings and tearoom managed by the National Capital Commission, open year-round, and the Costain children always enjoyed exploring and having tea there. If you leave the pathways to walk on the lawns you realize that you are walking on thyme, not grass, and the scent is wonderful.

April to June 1963

Happy Birthday to Cyn!

Cyn’s friends in England, Anne and Jessie, sent cards!

The rest of the school year went well for all the Costains.

Linda and Charlie’s French classes in Grades 6 and 7 combined to put on a production of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” with the older students narrating, and Charlie being Pierre with his classmates as Grandpere and the animals!

Cyn managed his costume in spite of being very busy having her birthday and being featured in the newspaper.

As President of the Ladies Guild of her church, Cyn was designated as the opening Speaker for the 67th Annual Meeting of the Women’s Auxiliary of the entire country which was being held in Ottawa.

“Madame Chairman, my Lord Bishop, Ladies and Gentlemen-
I have a very great pleasure in welcoming you all to the 67th Annual Meeting of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Anglican Church of Canada in the Ottawa Diocese. I have been given this privilege as President of the Women’s Auxiliary of St. Christopher’s Church in Cardinal Heights, because we are one of the newest branches in the Diocese. I must admit that I have cast a longing thought back to Victorian times when the youngest member of the family was seen and not heard, but I am most aware of the fact that this is a very living part of Women’s Auxiliary traditions, that the new and young should be taken into the family and should share responsibilities and pleasures right from the beginning.

When the Ladies Guild of St. Christopher’s Church decided to become a branch of the Women’s Auxiliary we received a very warm welcome from the Diocesan President, Mrs. Johnstone and other members of the W.A. and I greatly appreciate the opportunity of passing on that welcome to you. A ‘warm welcome’ is such a happy phrase, which immediately makes one think of old friends being reunited and the meeting of new ones – of exchanging news of past doings and making plans for the future. I hope that this meeting will mean all of these things to you and that you will have a worthwhile, satisfying and rewarding time here.”

Cec, Boris Stoichef, Dr. Herzberg, and Don Ramsay

Meanwhile Cec was enjoying a visit from Dr Shimoda, one of the scientists he and his colleagues had met in Japan, who was presumably working with the N.R.C. spectroscopists. Cec was also invited to dinner at his College in Cambridge in June. He sent his regrets no doubt, but it was an honour.

The great excitement of June, however, was the first wedding of the young generation of the Costain family. Linda was the oldest girl of that generation, but she had 4 older male cousins and 2 of these, Merle’s sons John and Lorne, were engaged, with Lorne marrying Liz in Brantford, the Costains driving down for the occasion, and everyone getting dressed up on a lovely summer day.

John and Sharon- the next wedding couple in 64!

They were a lovely couple, I was thrilled by the whole occasion, and remember the hats as a key feature. Out west, the grandparents were enjoying the youngest members of the family, but no doubt their daughter Merle kept them informed of the festivities we all enjoyed.

After that excitement, the summer approached, the children advanced to Grades 7 and 8 and their holidays in the new house.

Cec had plans for a large garden – there already was asparagus- and there was a lovely Manitoba maple tree providing shade behind the house, the site of a future patio. The summer was going to be fun!

January to March 1963

From January until March of 1963, the Costains were preparing to move to their new house, while leading their ordinary lives. Since the house was literally down the hill and around a corner, overseeing the renovations was not a hard job, but imagining living there was another matter. They would be living in a neighbourhood not on the highway, so it would be a different perspective, even though they already knew many families around. The school was closer, as the crow flies, but getting to it in a Canadian winter would have meant wading through snow over two untrodden fields, so the children left that idea until spring. Selling the Montreal Road duplex they lived in was an important part of the financing plan, so an ad was put in the newspaper. And packing began.

Cec and Cyn had planned the overall structural changes already, and Cyn had sent her mother the diagrams showing how the reversal of the orientation of the stairs made for better floor plans on all levels, but the renovation of the kitchen was Cyn’s pet project, and she was meticulous in designing it to suit her exactly- counters low enough to work at, enough cupboard space, efficient placement of equipment, pale blue paint, and a phone corner, making it her office!

Doors and old cabinets removed, wallpaper gone, new dining room wall added!

The living room already had a big window looking out on the road, and Cyn’s beloved stone fireplace with chimney was added on to the outside wall. The children were quite taken with the novelty but having always lived with central heating, it did not have the same associations for them that it had for their mother!

The children each had a bedroom upstairs, with the roof and the gable windows making the walls slope inside, and they were promised that they would be allowed to choose the colour of the paint to cover up the hideous wallpaper.
The basement was unfinished, with a concrete floor, a sump pump in one corner to deal with spring flooding threats, the furnace under the stairs, the washing machine and dryer that kind Dorothy Scott had included in the house price close by, and a remnant of the farmhouse origin- a cold room in one corner, insulated from the heated house, with wooden shelving for the jams and jellies and bins below with earth in, to bury the root vegetables for winter storage. Cec had his tools down there, (and added to them more farm remnants as they appeared from overgrown mounds in the neglected garden). There was lots of room for storage, a permanent table for Charlie’s train set, and all the boxes and extras that come with moving.

Grandparents and family out west approved!

Moving Day was March 1st, and the children’s Spring Break came a few weeks later so they could help more with the settling in and learn to climb the old apple tree in the back garden. They would miss the hollow down behind that flooded in spring, and the wide fields they had played in, but as the years passed the hollow was filled in, and the fields became covered with houses. Ottawa was expanding, and the move was an excellent choice. Altogether, an exciting time!

Our teachers were always confusing Janet and Linda- just because we both had glasses and braids?

December 1962

December was always a time of preparation for Cyn. She sent out Christmas cards with names from Cec’s travels added, and lovely unusual cards arrived in return, along with the customary pictures of the children of their friends, some quite grown- the adorable flower girl from their wedding with two children of her own!

Cyn also had to get her Christmas parcels for friends and family overseas off as early as possible, and she needed to get ready for Charlie’s birthday and the Costain Christmas as well. Presents this year had been made easier by Cec’s travel- her ‘Presents Sent List’ shows that Cec’s sisters and mother all got ‘Japanese silk material’, with sisters-in-law Errol and Leona an ‘Indian Scarf’, while the men of the family got ivory trinkets, and nephew Bruce a ‘Toledo knife’.

Cec’s bowling sessions with the Lab. led to a Christmas present of his own bowling shoes from Charlie (size 12 shoes may have been hard to rent) and prompted the activity for Charlie’s birthday party: he and his friends went bowling with Cec, followed by a celebration afterwards.

December also had local invitations, a funeral, and the birth of a Pembleton baby- Cyn’s cousin in New York very happy about becoming a grandmother.

And while all this usual Christmas activity was going on, with baking and wrapping and decorating part of the family life, Cec and Cyn were planning a real change- renovating and then moving to their new house. Excitement for all in the New Year!

November 1962

November is not a great month for camping but it appears that Charlie’s Cub Group (the younger division of Boy Scouts) had a cookout one weekend.

Cec preferred indoor activities, and went bowling with his colleagues from the Lab.

The Costains no doubt sent best wishes and congratulations to Santiago Polo on the occasion of his wedding, and probably some of his friends from the Lab in Ottawa attended.

However, for the Costains, the main event in November seems to have been preparing for the Public Speaking Contest at the school. Both children incorporated some personal connection into their speech based on the gifts Cec had brought home from his trip, but most of the speech was informative and factual. Cyn typed their efforts but at this level, there was less input from her. The speeches were given in class, then the best competed within the school. Linda made a case for reading being her favourite hobby, and ended her speech on ‘Hobbies’ with this paragraph. “Most boys and girls have at least one hobby. I collect postcards, small china figures and dolls of all nations, and I learn a great deal every day through my favourite hobby, reading. One of these might lead to my life work and anyway I will get a great deal of pleasure from them.” This speech went no farther (probably to her relief), but Charlie was once again one of the 7 contestants in the Intermediate Level with his telescope speech.

After touching on the history of telescopes with Galileo and Newton, he went on to explain that Newtonian telescopes like his were based on mirrors, and gave details about the biggest in the world at Mount Palomar, then returned to his personal experience. “It is rather unfortunate that at first when I got my telescope, it turned cloudy. Instead of looking at the sky, I have had to look at other things. I can see the Uplands Airport radar tower about 5 miles away and I can watch it turning around with an occasional flash as a plane comes down. I can also see birds in perfect detail on the telephone line if they would only stay in one place. The magnification of the telescope is 126 so if a bird is 126 feet away, it appears to be only 1 foot away from your eye. I have also been looking at the sun, and for this I put a special sun glass in the lens.” He goes on to describe and explain sun spots, then his observations of Jupiter and Saturn once there was a clear night. He finished with “I don’t know much about astronomy yet but it is very exciting to look and to learn.”

This time, Charlie won the Intermediate Contest, and got a letter of appreciation from the Fairfield School District Association, as well as a page of the scrapbook devoted to it. The typed copy probably was sent to Carol in the West Indies, but the rough copy survives.

As a teacher (my life work?), the adult Linda found looking at the children’s work at the Grade 6 and 7 level an indication of future direction. I believe Linda’s ‘Hobby’ topic had met some opposition when she stated that her hobby was reading books. Her speech carefully defines the different sorts of hobbies- Collecting, Crafts, Activities- and in the latter category, which she explains as doing things for relaxation, she lumps all sports (which she was not at all interested in) with bird-watching, gardening, and, in her case, reading. It was an argument which she made sure to win, presaging her interest in debating in high school and her future success in essay writing and exams at all levels- not to mention the collecting of a library of over five thousand books.

Charlie’s speech shows his interest in science, and illustrates clearly the technical points as well as personal observations made with his telescope. And I believe at this point, the Costains started to plan their 1963 summer holiday, when there would be a total eclipse of the sun, best seen from the province of Quebec with a telescope …

October 1962

Cec’s wartime experience of India had not allowed for travelling within the country. This time, after his stay at the university in Mumbai, he visited colleagues in the north, in Banaras (Varanasi), and after that, the Observatory in Nainital where Dr. Pant, who had worked with Herzberg at the N.R.C. earlier in the 60s, and whom I expect Cec had met at the Spectroscopy Conferences in Columbus, or even the symposium in Japan, gave him the opportunity to see the Himalayas in the distance when the clouds allowed.

Another picture shows the Yamuna or Ganges River up close, as if Cec was looking at the 16th century Allahabad Fort from the water.

He must have made a side trip from New Delhi to see the Taj Mahal, since his slides of the outside were foreshadowed by postcards to Linda and Charlie showing the detail of the inside that interested him. The children had a multi-volume children’s encyclopedia, so would have been able to look up the places of interest, but Cec added more facts rather than personal details!
On the back of the Taj Mahal PC to Linda: “Dear Linda, Here are the actual tombs seen thru the arch in Charlie’s card. The flowers are semi-precious stones inlaid 1/2” deep in the marble. The tombs themselves are each from one piece of marble. Love Daddy.”

He also did a lot of shopping: Linda got another 2 dolls out of the visit to India, magnificent male and female Indian dolls, and Cyn silk saris and scarves- material for future sewing projects.

Cec left for Europe October 13th., stopped briefly in Italy and Spain (another doll, more PCs), and arrived home in Ottawa October 21st. On the postcard of Venice addressed to Master Charles Costain he writes: “17/10/62. Typical sight along the Grand Canal, the homes of nobles & princes of the Middle Ages. The canal has lots of traffic, gondolas, water taxis, & continuous ferry or ‘bus’ service. Tell Mummy the food was wonderful. See you soon- maybe before you get this. Love Daddy.”

Having Cec home again was reason enough for celebration, but getting presents is always fun. There was a lot of loot in his luggage- no Declaration Forms were preserved- but Cyn must have collected the telescope that had been shipped from Japan at Canadian Customs earlier that month while the children were at school, and kept it until Cec returned, because Charlie remembers that Cec’s help was needed to put it all together.

Later that Fall, Charlie made a speech about My Telescope where he describes what happened. “When my father goes away on a trip, he usually brings back a present. This year he went to Japan and India, and when he got home, he produced a huge box, nothing like I expected. I went to work unwrapping the parcel, and found a long wide tube with a mirror in the bottom. We put the pieces together. What a surprise- a telescope, for looking at the stars…”

Of course, life went back to normal now that everyone was in their proper place. Cec was glad to be home and back at work in the Lab. Among the younger scientists at the NRC, there was a spate of weddings. Dr. Hin Lu, on the permanent staff in the Physics Division, had married Marion in October, before Cec got home. In November, the wedding of the Spanish Post-Doc. Fellow, Santiago, would happen in the States, and the South African George Ritter’s wedding was planned for the new year in Ottawa. Cyn and Cec started having late night discussions that would bear fruit by Christmas, and the children incorporated their father’s travels into their November Public Speaking assignments.

September 1962

September was a busy month. Cec left for Tokyo on August 31st, Labour Day was the following Monday, and the children started school the next day, Charlie in Grade 6, Linda in Grade 7 with Mr Lumsden, her first male teacher.

Cyn must have been working with her fellow Guild members on their fashion show, which was the following week- having arranged the clothes with the shops that were lending them, they needed to fit them to the ‘models’ and rehearse them on the raised catwalk that couldn’t have been built until after that Sunday’s service (the Church Hall being a multi-purpose structure that could host an audience with the altar area curtained off.)

Linda was one of the girls wearing ‘Back To School’ outfits- throughout the 60s in my experience, girls were not allowed to wear trousers to school- and later in the show, Winter Wear, with a jacket I remember as being a very strange colour- a deep purple, most unusual in those days, which I think they paired with pumpkin coloured pants, which would never have been my choice!.

Later Cyn got nice pictures of me doing this, but the newspaper clipping shows the adults and youngest model, and with 300 people attending, the Ladies Guild probably regarded this as a successful fundraiser. Unlike Cyn’s Cookery Demonstrations, however, the fashion show was not repeated.

Meanwhile Cec, having enjoyed the “soothing comfort” and “personal attention” of a flight over the Pacific (which led him to swear he would never do it again until he could travel First Class with room for his legs), was welcomed in Tokyo with his colleagues, especially Dr. Herzberg his boss, to the International Symposium on Molecular Structure and Spectroscopy with a photo op.

Papers and presentations followed but their hosts also arranged many sightseeing opportunities which Cec enjoyed.

One of the things Cec did in Tokyo was to buy Charlie a telescope and arrange to have it shipped to Ottawa. He bought a Japanese doll with 6 different wigs for Linda’s international doll collection, and pearl earrings for Cyn.

In mid-September Cec moved on to India for a month, to fulfill his commitments there. He visited Mumbai, New Delhi, and Varanasi, visiting former N.R.C. Fellows and meeting other scientists. At home, post cards arrived!

August 1962

I can’t help thinking that August 1962 must have been rather busy for the Costain family. They returned home from their July holiday- American cottage, with hard work at the university for Cec; Stratford plays; and visits to relatives- and immediately began preparing for activity in September. Cec was going on a trip to Japan, India, and Europe for September and most of October, with a paper to give at the symposium to get ready, travel details to finalize, and work in his Lab to organize during his absence.

Cyn had to resume ordinary home life while cleaning up from a month lived out of suitcases, and her Ladies Guild had an ambitious fashion show planned for September that must have taken a lot of preliminary organizing.

The children, however, having had swimming lessons in June, and enjoyed putting them to use at the cottage in July, now had a month to enjoy their vacation before school started. The Klemans, the Swedish family who had house-and-cat-sat during July, invited the family up to their rented cottage one weekend for more water fun.

And Linda celebrated her eleventh birthday- more organizing for Cyn. It seems to have been a low key outing- Linda and 2 friends, Pamela and Joanne, went with Charlie and met some ponies! I assume there was a celebratory birthday cake and meal, and that Carol sent a parcel ‘from Grannie’ as usual to join the family presents.

In Ottawa, the Central Canada Exhibition was- is?- an August feature, and the Costains attended, for the usual combination of ferris wheel rides, farm animal and produce competitions, fairway food of cotton candy and corn dogs, and the grandstand show in the evening.

George Gobel was a comedian well known from American television. Of course, the Costains didn’t have a TV at this point…

Then by the end of the month Cyn and Cec would have been focused on getting the children ready for school, Cec ready for travel, and the whole family prepared for a rather long time without Daddy, waving goodbye to him at the airport on the 31st.