Nola Haner
Nola Galbraith, a true-blue Island girl, aspired to be a nurse since she was knee-high to her aunt Maude, a registered nurse in New York City. In 1950, Nola graduated from her dream profession and began a 25-year practice as an RN in several Ontario locations. She would also sit on the Sudbury Manitoulin District Health Council as a health director, hitching a ride to Sudbury for the meetings with Dr. Bob Hamilton of Gore Bay. In later years, Nola volunteered for the St. Francis Anglican Church and the Canadian Cancer Society. She has been named ‘Liberal Volunteer of The Year’ three times.
The cabin that paternal great-grandfather John Galbraith built on Lake Mindemoya still stands today. Before he retired, he built the house that Nola’s family would inherit later. “One of the popular items my paternal grandfather would often talk about was all the snow he had to contend with,” Nola recalls. “As the V-shaped snow plow approached an area, the local men would come out to help shovel in order to keep the plow from getting stuck.” For most of the winter, a sleigh and two horses worked to get the family around.
Maternal great-grandfather McDonald was a pioneer in the Sandfield area where he ran the first gristmill. Their farmhouse was in Snowville, part of Tehkummah. “I can still remember going to the root cellar with great grandmother to fetch potatoes with her. She wore her cotton dress covered with a bib apron. I must have been four- or five-years-old.” Maternal Grandparents G.F. McDonald and Kate Ward were farmers, also in the Tehkummah area.
Nola was born during the depression to Herb and C.L. (nee McDonald) Galbraith on her mother’s birthday at their Beaver Road farm on July 18, 1928. Doctor Davies officiated and Mrs. Legge, their neighbour, assisted. Nola was named after her aunt’s best friend, Nola Angel, who her aunt had met in training at Hamilton General Hospital. Nola had two older sisters, Margaret and Dorothy, and would later have a younger brother, Bruce.
Marie was six years older and she liked to ‘mother’ Nola. The young lass and her brother Bruce spent a lot of time at their McDonald grandparents’ home near Spring Bay, currently the Brad Skippen farm. Grandpa McDonald was a part-time harness maker and an amateur vet. In 1909 he built a huge barn on his property. Many neighbours came to help while the women prepared food. The photo of that barn testifies to the huge undertaking such a building was at that time.
“We often helped gather eggs in the two-tiered hen house. I remember Sunday dinners being big events.” Christmas was usually spent at the McDonald house and New Year’s as well. “Our stockings would be bulging with a big apple and an orange as well as some hard Christmas candy. We also got one ‘real’ (bought) present and some clothes. On Easter Sunday we didn’t get chocolate but we got as many eggs as we could eat.”
The oldest McDonald daughter, Flo, was very generous. She was a teacher at 16 and taught Nola’s dad at Grimesthorpe School and later in Timmins. She helped the family by sponsoring family members to attend college. When she retired they renamed the school she taught at the Flora McDonald Public School. Flora went on to receive the Order of Canada.
During the depression in 1929, a number of cattle on the farm died from disease. “We began to sell the cream to Wagg’s in Mindemoya to supplement our income. We made enough for a few groceries and gas for the car. Pigeon pie was a favourite in those years. Cornflakes were a treat once a week on Sunday morning, a break from the healthier cracked wheat porridge. Every fall, just before freeze-up in Lake Mindemoya, my father and my grandfather would use a gill net to catch enough herring for the winter. Aunt Maud would send us used clothing that would be refashioned into clothes for all of us. I didn’t get my first ‘boughten’ coat until I was 14. It was a herringbone tweed coat ordered from the Eaton’s catalogue.”
“In the summer I slept on a straw mattress in a box-like bed my father had made. It was warm and cozy. Grandpa and Grandma McDonald had soft blankets in their white cement house. It was fun to sleep over at their home. I was so proud of my grandparents and their lovely home. We liked to visit our neighbour and dad’s cousin Jim Galbraith too. We didn’t have a radio, so when something interesting happened we would visit Uncle Jim. I remember listening to King Edward VIII in 1938 when he abdicated the throne in order to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson.”
One of Nola’s chores was collecting the cows for evening milking, bringing them back from the bush in the late afternoons. She would listen for the bell one cow always wore. The procession home would follow the narrow path softened from the pressure of so many hooves. The barn was a special place. It harboured a barrel of molasses perfect for finger sampling. In the winter all the animals, pigs, chicken, cows and horses made the barn cozy. Pigs had rings in their noses so they couldn’t dig their way out of enclosures. Fresh cow manure, both cheap and effective, found its way into foundation cracks in the barn.
Making do with what you had was normal on the farm. A week after Nola had her tonsils out, she started bleeding again but Dr. McQuay could not be reached. Grandpa McDonald scraped some alum off a big chunk of the material he had on hand and blew it into the back of her throat. He had done this for his horses and it worked for Nola. The bleeding stopped.
Money was scarce during these years before hydro came to the Island. With hopes for a better life, Herb left the farm and built a store at Dryden’s Corners in Campbell Township using sweat equity. Today that building stands in contrast to those times, with its bright orange facade.
Nola, nine, found that life got more interesting after they moved to the store. “My dad trucked meat to Sudbury in the summer when the roads were open, and he brought back canned goods. My mother ran the store and the BP (British Petroleum) gas pumps in front. Pop was kept in an ice cooler. She also managed the telephone switchboard for the Campbell area. At night, a Coleman lantern lit up the switchboard.”
“We used to sell soft penny candy with white centers. If we found one with a pink center, we would get a chocolate bar. We thought we were pretty sly when we brought a pin into the store to check each one until we found a pink center. My mum must have wondered how we got so lucky.”
Mondays were wash days. Gillett’s Lye and some P and G (Procter and Gamble) laundry soap were added to the hot water on the back of the stove. White items were boiled then placed into cold water and soap in a washing machine that was hand-operated. All the children took turns. The wringer was next and lastly the clothesline.
Nola attended school at Grimesthorpe, just like her dad. During the war, the children would take 25 cents to school to buy war savings stamps. “When we had saved up eight dollars worth of stamps, the teacher would send them to the government to support the troops.” Nola recalls having a photo taken of her and neighbour Gilbert Alexander just before he went overseas. “Now I wish I could find that photo because he never came back.”
“I used to walk the two and a half miles to the school from Dryden’s Corners. In the winter, roads were often not passable so we would walk through the fields along rail fence lines. My brother often got a ride on a sleigh pulled by our dog.” Occasionally, Nola would walk on top of the rail fences coming home imagining herself as a high-wire walker in the circus. “On cold rainy days, mother would have hot stew ready for us.”
Nola recalls the day her dad arrived at the school with his sleigh to take the kids to see the icebergs in Lonely Bay. The class was awed by these huge structures, some bigger than their homes. “I also recall my first train ride with other students from Manitoulin to see King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Sudbury during the royal tour. It was a very hot day in 1939. I can still see the Queen in her beautiful blue outfit, sitting beside the King as they passed by in Sudbury.”
In the spring, beavers would flood out the fields in the low areas, making it necessary to take a boat to school. Coats would hang at the back, one side for girls, one for boys. The wood stove was near, perfect for drying wet coats. “We had the same teacher, Mr. Roland Fraser, for all eight years. He managed 47 kids in the 1938-39 school year, with eight children in my class. That was the biggest class of all.”
“Later, when I was in Grade 11, Mr. Fraser taught me again. Both he and his wife taught at the Mindemoya Continuation School at that time. I had him for two more years, making it 10 in all.” Grade 13 was in Gore Bay High School. “My friend Eloween Williamson and I shared a room in a small apartment in the Fogal home that year.”
After graduation in 1947, Nola decided she wanted to drive a truck like her dad but this idea was staunchly resisted. Instead, the young teen joined the three-year registered nursing training program at Hamilton General Hospital just as her aunt had done years earlier. “I worked 12-hour shifts from seven in the morning to seven at night with one day off per month. We had to be back in our rooms by 10 pm. The supervisor was rather mean and it all seemed so overwhelming. I remember calling my father and telling him I wanted to quit. He calmly said, ‘just sleep on it,’ and I did. I stayed and I’m glad I did.”
“There were 48 of us and we were like a family, working and living together. I had two or three really good friends. We had small wardrobes and it wasn’t unusual to see your suit walking down the street. It was alright because we all did it. For entertainment we could ride the Beltline Streetcar from one end to the other and back again for 10 cents. It was fun just watching people get on and off.”
Nola met her future husband Herb Connell at Hamilton General. Herb was recovering from knee surgery. “He was good looking and very nice. I remember having endured a rather bitter lecture from my supervisor. I was trying to hide in an empty room but Herb heard me crying and offered his sympathy.” His kindness resonated with the young pretty nurse. When Herb asked her to go out, she happily agreed, realizing her training was almost over.
On July 21, 1951 Nola and Herb hosted a small wedding with 35 guests in a Hamilton chapel. The honeymoon took the newlyweds to Michigan and Manitoulin. Herb was a hoisting engineer, operating big cranes and loaders at Westinghouse. Their three children, Lynn, Susan and Bradley, were all born in Hamilton.
Working at the Hamilton General kept the young nurse very busy. “I also did some private duty nursing in homes for nine dollars a day. I spent nine years at the Hamilton Mountain Maternity Hospital where we would take care of babies as small as one and a half pounds.”
In 1962 Nola and Herb moved to Manitoulin where Nola would work at the old Red Cross hospital in Mindemoya. “We had a lot of chronic patients and most afternoon and evening shifts would find us alone.” Chuckling, Nola recalls asking an elder gentleman, ‘Do you want a suppository?’ to which he responded, ‘no, I read the Recorder.’
“Our son Brad had a pet named Duke, a border collie. On day shift he would sit on the porch of the old hospital, waiting to take me home. We had horses too. Mr. Farquhar Anglin owned the adjacent property and he kindly fenced in a field of four acres for our horses.”
“I was working three shifts and neighbours would come in to check on Herb who had become quite ill with multiple sclerosis, MS.” There was no home care at the time so most of his care came from Nola. He suffered with this condition for almost 12 years, with no remissions so his condition got progressively worse. He died in 1971 and was buried on Manitoulin.
In 1971 Nola was hired by the Sudbury and District Health Unit. She spent three years as the school nurse at Manitoulin Secondary School and spent one day a week at the public schools. “Most of the injuries in high school were cuts or minor injuries acquired in the woodworking shop. We did immunizations, vision, hearing tests and tuberculosis testing. We also did all the home care. This consisted of house calls to do dressings, give bed baths and eye drops for cataracts.”
On December 16, 1978 in the Pentecostal Church in Echo Bay, Nola married Harvey Haner whom she had known since childhood. Harvey had been in the Air Force and had lost his wife in a car accident. He had a daughter, Linda Peever. The couple was wed by Harvey’s brother Frank, a preacher in Echo Bay. The December date, at Harvey’s request, made their age difference only seem to be nine years instead of ten that it would be in January. One of the wedding gifts was a barn drawing by Ivan Wheale. Nola had been a student of his.
Harvey’s brother Calvin was the best man and Frank’s wife Thelma was the bridesmaid. A party was held a few days later at the Rock Garden Terrace. There was a ‘Come and Go’ at the church and lots of people who knew Nola, attended.
In 1985 the Mindemoya nurse underwent major back surgery which ended her career. Not giving up, the determined nurse volunteered to check for head lice in the public schools. She also drove a school bus. Harvey farmed and drove a school bus too. Over the years, Nola also worked for political representatives both at the provincial and federal levels, with some years as secretary and president of provincial parties.
“Harvey and I travelled to Britain and Europe, as well as to the Caribbean several times. We spent nine winters in Florida. We had a good life together.” Then, on December 7, 2004, Harvey died from a heart attack.
All alone now, Nola enjoys her ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “I just had my 64th nursing reunion at the Hamilton General a few months ago. A few of us got on a trolley car and saw the beautiful, newly renovated Hamilton harbour.”
Sibling Bruce became an auctioneer, a job he loved until he lost much of his vision. Bruce could sing the ‘auctioneer’s song’ in the middle of his rapid verbal bidding. “I recall Bruce yelling ‘sold to Nola’ for an item he or I wanted. Norm Morrell took over this business. Bruce, Dorothy and Margaret are all deceased.”
Daughter Lynn and husband Blair Quesnel, both retired teachers, live in Collingwood. They have a cottage on Big Lake. Daughter Susan and her husband Larry Moggy farm in the Bidwell area on Manitoulin. Sue was a secretary in the school system for about 30 years, first at Manitoulin Secondary School and later at the Little Current Public School. Son Bradley, with degrees in aerospace and mechanical engineering, worked for Honeywell in Mississauga. His wife Christina is a dog trainer and she worked with Pet Smart.
“I have always prided myself at being a very organized and independent person, having survived two husbands. Macular degeneration has eroded my eyesight so I really enjoy the talking books from CNIB. “That is a great service. Three books come to me at a time in the mail and I send three back,” she explains. “On the other hand, my poor vision is awkward when I go out and people say hello. I can’t see their faces so I have to wait until they speak first before I can tell who they are.” I had to give up my car a year ago. I can use my scooter outside to get around but it does limit where I can go to some extent. Buses take me shopping.”
“The most important event in my life, looking back now, was graduating as a nurse. My aunt Maud had done the same earlier and it gave me, as it gave her, a means for independence,” Nola sums up. “I look forward to being in Florida each year, visiting old friends. I have always loved the hot weather of summer the most. I never liked the cold.
“My hobbies were oil painting, making Christmas cards, pressed flower cards and sewing pretty fabric dolls. I have lived a wonderful life so far, enjoying it to the fullest each step of the way. I really have no regrets. Mostly I fear losing my independence and having to give up my home.”
“I love Manitoulin. It is the best place on earth. It’s my home. This house, my grandparents’ originally, was built from cement in 1876 at what was then the edge of Mindemoya. It is the oldest ‘town’ house. The people here are great. It’s hard to put it into words. When I travel, I am always eager for a new adventure; exploring a new place like British Columbia or Cape Cod. When I come home and cross the swing bridge, it is such a special feeling to know that I am home again.”
