Long lost found war love, or, Nan was a war bride

How many Canadians are descended from war brides? How many of us exist because a woman tore herself from home and sailed to the other side of the world?

My maternal grandmother was a war bride from North Shields, near Newcastle, England. She met and married a St. John's boy who'd joined the Royal Navy. She crossed to Halifax on the RMS Scythia, a Cunard ship. Her "diner d'adieu" on March 25, 1946, was petite marmite, poached salmon with sauce hollandaise, roast turkey royale, French beans, braised celery, boiled and browned potatoes, plum pudding and brandy sauce, and ice cream.

This for women who'd been rationed each week to:

lb 3oz meat (offal and sausages not rationed)
4oz bacon
3 pints milk (or l packet of milk powder per month)
2 oz butter
2 oz margarine
2 oz fat or lard
2 oz loose tea
l egg per week (or l packet of egg powder, ‘makes l2 eggs,’ per month)
2 oz jam
3 oz sugar
l oz cheese
3 oz sweets
2 lbs onions (l942-44 only)
l6 oz soap (household soap, beauty soap and soap flakes)

Most of the women on board disembarked in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

More than one had a message waiting for her: "Not wanted."

The Scythia then turned around for St. John's. Nan arrived on March 28th. The streets were full of snow. She had no boots. Strangers offered her oranges. Her husband found her, carried her uphill.

Nan's maiden name was Ellen Jarwick. She kept contact with her brother until he died; when he called, he'd ask for "Our Nell." My mother kept contact with one of her cousins by sporadic letter.

A few years before she died, eaten out by Alzheimer's, she'd pace her living room, listening to random offerings of radio -- she never played the Vera Lynn records after her husband died -- and say she only wanted to go back to England. She died in St. John's.

I searched "Jarwick" on the net one afternoon.

Wouldn't you know. My long-lost cousin, Andy Jarwick, has posted a very detailed Jarwick family tree. It's taken him about ten years to find all the information. One square was blank: Nellie Jarwick.

He'd had no idea a branch of the family existed in Newfoundland.

An unlikely connection. But easy enough to make.