Gladys Ellen Perrin Cranstoun
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In my mother's later years she suffered from dimentia and at one point when I took her to the bank she came out and was standing there not knowing where she was. I went up to her and she just looked at me until I told her who I was and she said, "I feel so stupid, I don't know where I am and I feel so alone." After she passed away I got to thinking about her comment and after I had gained some experience in finding family I seriously went to work on her family, to find out who she was. I wish I had done this when she was here so she would have known of her rich heritage and the truth about her father. When my mother died I gave a eulogy for her, below is the transcript: “When my brother and I were planning this funeral the young woman who was helping us asked us if we wanted to say something at the funeral. We both looked at each other and said, "No." Later that evening I was talking with my daughter, who was at school studying to becoming a nurse and she told me it was not unusual for someone with a strong will to hang on until someone was there. She consoled me with the fact that my mother most likely heard us talking about coming back the next day and she held on until someone was there. Lucky for me, it was me and I know in my heart, and I hope it helps everyone, when she opened her eyes and looked into mine and smiled she was at peace when she left us. It was later that night when I was trying to sleep that I realized that something more than just a few kind words at a funeral had to be said about this woman who has been my mother for sixty years. So, it’s not a time to mourn the passing but more a time for us to reflect and remember her life and the joy she gave all of us. So I’m going to take a few moments to reflect on a few of my memories and I hope it helps and bring back a few of your own. My mother was an introverted person who never said very much. It became a joke between my brother and I when we compared notes so-to-speak about phone conversations with her. She’d call or get on the phone after my father, say a few words and ask her questions, sometimes before you could answer she’d be on to the next one, say goodbye and hang up. My brother and I would chuckle between ourselves because one of us spoke to her two seconds longer than the other. My father always thought he was the power of the household but my mother was like a snake. She’d wait until you weren’t expecting it and pounce. She’d somehow grab you under the armpit and once she had you she was like a pit bull she never let go. As much as it hurt it was also funny to have this little woman having such complete control over a strong young man and she wouldn’t let go until you did exactly what she wanted. Mother’s and son’s have a funny relationship. My mother was the one who you didn’t want to be on the bad side of. She’d never confront you face to face but you just knew when you were on her bad side. What she didn’t know and what my brother and I did was that a little word, a smile and a wink and everything was forgiven. Funny how life repeats itself.
My son uses the same trick on my wife. I remember in high school my favourite lunch was Spam sandwiches with lettuce and mayonnaise, three of them, which she dutifully made for me everyday. It’s funny now, because years later when my brother and I were in Maui we discovered that Spam is quite the big thing on the island. Apparently it was a staple during the war and people have not given it up, in fact they even sell it at the Burger King in Lahaina. My mother knew my favourite dinner was spaghetti and no one could make it like her. She had to teach my wife how to make it and lucky for me she picked up a lot of my mother's cooking tips and now it’s a favourite in our house. My wife picked up everything accept for my mother’s recipe on how to make Yorkshire pudding. It’s now a joke in our house because as much as she tries we always seem to get this flat piece of I don’t know what instead of the fluffy light pastry my mother used to make. She did recently compliment my wife on her home made pea soup which she also loved, telling her it was better than hers. One of the things I will miss most from my mother is our Christmas treats, shortbread cookies and Christmas cake. Every year since we got married we looked forward to my mother's shortbread cookies and Christmas cake more than presents and it became a joke in our house that no one could eat dads shortbreads from grandma without permission. Little did she know I liked her Christmas cake even more. Speaking of Christmas, one of the family jokes is the “Brown Sweater Incident”. One Christmas when the kids were 7 or 8 grandma gave my youngest son a brown sweater instead of a toy. He hated it so much and we made him wear it when we went to grandma's just so she’d feel good and could see it on him. When we left my son couldn’t get the sweater off fast enough when we got into the car. Twenty years later we all still joke was when it comes to grandma’s present that it is another bigger brown sweater. One of the things I loved most about my mother is the rediscovery of my brother. Being fifteen older than him we kind of missed the brother thing growing up as I was married and out of the house when he was growing up. When my father got sick, my brother got mad at me because I wasn’t there we had a terrible fight and it was my mother who quietly and in no uncertain terms explained the facts of life to us and now we have great brother to brother relationship which I treasure more than he knows.
Recently I had to take my mother shopping. We went into the grocery store and she was looking at crusty bread. I said my father didn’t want crusty bread. She looked at me with “the look” and said, “To hell with him. I like crusty bread.” And into the cart it went. She had your number buddy, nothing got by her. That was my mother and I will miss her.” My Mothers Family History When I began my search for my family history I discovered there was a much more interesting history to her side of the family than she ever knew or expressed and the new information I discovered about her family would have blown her away.
One of the first searches I performed on ancestry.ca was a search for my mother’s father, I found him and what I discovered was most shocking. I called my father to confirm the history I knew and when he repeated the story I told him to sit down because I now knew the truth. George Edward Perrin committed suicide on November 29, 1929 and died at Toronto East General Hospital. Cause of death was a gunshot wound through the lung, spleen and heart and listed as a suicide, George Edward Perrin was 27 years old. When I discovered this I understood my mother’s last feelings of being all alone in this world, although this hurt a little as she had her own family, I began to understand her feelings. October 29, 1929 was known as “Black Tuesday”. The markets went into free fall, investors, brokers and the public watched the drama unfold. Some became hysterical, some began to cry softly, and some just watched in silence. Terror crept into every investors mind as the market dropped straight down. The golden promise of the roaring 20’s was shattered in one day as was the financial stability of the nation. Stocks were sold at any price offered as complete confusion overtook the trading process. The worse was yet to come as the economy began to crumble and the depths of the depression were not reached until 1932/33 and recovery only really began to surface in 1936/37. One month to the day after the crash, November 29, 1929 George Edward Perrin, my grandfather, committed suicide. My betting is he thought the world was coming to an end and I have to wonder if this was the reason he took his own life. Certainly a coward's way out leaving a wife and a newborn child. I think the last statement expresses my thoughts on my mother's father. It is interesting to note the name on the death report is that of his mother rather than his wife. My mother and her mother were in Windsor where the family lived, so George had to be visiting his parents in Toronto. My mother had close ties to her grandfather Thomas Perrin, in fact he gave her away on her wedding day. We always knew the Perrin’s as mom’s family, and they will always be, my great grandparents. However, a family tree is based on bloodline and when I found the 1911 English Census, the mystery of George Edward Perrin began to unravel. The census showed that Thomas and Kate Perrin had adopted my mother’s father and his real name was George Edward Last. Now, for my mother's sake, I was determined to find out who her father really was. I found he was the son of Edward James Last 1854-1903 from Medway, Kent, England, who was a labourer in a coal yard married to my great grandmother Emily Godbold 1873-? of Chatham, Kent, England. Edward had been married previously to Anne Wells 1856-1893 and they had four children:
Edward re-married two years after Anne died to Emily Godbold and they had four children:
Edward died a year after my great grandfather was born in October 1903 at 47 years old. Now this is where the story becomes very difficult to understand. My great grandmother Emily remarried in 1904 to Alfred Astle 1871-1932 who was a labourer at the dockyards. She gave my grandfather up for adoption somewhere between October 1903 and October 1904. I find this difficult to accept as she took her two youngest daughters Sarah and Emily with her into her new marriage and the girls retained the name Last. I was able to trace my grandfahter’s bloodline back to my three times great grandfather Henry Last 1793-1884, his son was Charles Last 1823-1876, he died before his father, Edward James Last 1854-1903, and George Edward Last 1902-1929. There are of course, brothers and sisters in the family which I have traced as well. I’m sure there are bloodline relatives still alive, as I write this. I can find no tie to the Perrin family, either through marriage or census to show they knew each other but Emily and her new husband Alfred had a son named Alfred Barnabas Astle who married Edith Gertrude Perrin! I have not found a tie as yet to my great grandfathter, Thomas Perrin’s family but there must be, everything is just to coincidental. In 1914, Kate Perrin and George Edward Last-Perrin returned to England. I have found death records for Kate's mother, Lucy Ann Biggerstaff who died in 1914 which may have been the reason for the trip. Her husband, Thomas, did not accompany them on the trip. I can't explain why because Thomas didn't enlist until 1916 for WWI. George Edward Perrin married Gladys Emily Walker (November 10, 1903 - November 30, 1976) on June 6, 1925 in Windsor, Essex, Ontario. They had a son Kenneth Edward Walker Perrin born May 24, 1927 who died July 19, 1927 and of course my mother Gladys Ellen Perrin. My mother was named after her mother and her great grandmother Ellen Moffat-Walker. So there you have it, the truth about my mother's father and the knowledge she and we, her children, never new and I dare say my grandmother neve knew either. But that is not the whole history of my mother's family, which is rich in Canadian history. We have to look at my grandmother, Gladys Emily Walker, to discover this wonderful history. Marriage Gladys Ellen Perrin married Eric William Cranstoun on July 23, 1949 at Riverdale Presbyterian Church, Toronto, Ontario. She was given away by her grandfather Thomas Perrin. Gladys and Eric had six children, three sons and three daughters. Gladys Emily Walker | Thomas and Kate Perrin
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Gladys Ellen Perrin was my mother and she was a quiet unassuming person, who quite frankly was very introverted and unsure of herself. Yet to me, her eldest son, she was a rock who held the family together through the good and bad times and she put up with my father for over sixty years!
I had all these pictures which documented the kid’s lives to this point so I started to make a funny movie for all the kids for Christmas and it turned into a labour of love and a full time job taking two months to complete. When I finished I realized I didn’t have many pictures of my mother and father so I spoke to my brother and he said my mother gave him some pictures as well so now I need to go through all the family pictures so I can digitize the pictures so they don’t deteriorate and the kids will have pictures of their history. My eldest son saw his great grandfather for the first time in his life Monday night when I brought home a wedding picture. Thanks to my mother for having the foresight to give me some of the family history and being the inspiration behind my 1 hour movie.
