Harry James Wilkey was my grandfather and he was born in Shoredich London on March 13, 1887. I don't know much about his life in England, except that he trained as a metal fabricator. I have a copy of his apprenticeship papers (somewhere).

Harry sailed for Canada from Liverpool, England in April 1908. When he left England he had been under the impression that in Canada "the streets were paved with gold"; however, following his arrival in Montreal, Quebec, he somehow ended up in the tiny rural Ontario community of Sharbot Lake, which had no paved streets at all. That must have been quite a shock, having come from a metropolitan city like London.

I'm not sure how or where he met my grandmother, Mina Ruttan (also known by some family as "Minnie"), but she grew up not far from Sharbot Lake, so they likely met through mutual friends or family. They married on January 22, 1910 and lived in Kingston, Ontario.

After their marriage, Harry wanted to take Mina home to meet his family in England. Unfortunately my grandmother had a fear of water. Terrified at the thought of crossing the ocean in a boat, she refused to accompany him. I don't know when he left Canada for this trip, but he returned in January 1911, I found a passenger manifest for the Mauritania which showed him on a voyage departing Liverpool on January 21, 1911 and arriving in New York City on January 28th (I presume that he would have returned from New York to Kingston by train). This trip would prove to be the last time that he would see any of his family, except for his brother, Phil.

While living in Kingston, Harry and Mina had 2 daughters, Pauline Alice Charlotte, and Jean Phyllis. Some time before the birth of their 3rd child in 1917, Evelyn Patricia, my grandparents moved to Ottawa. They rented a home not far from downtown, where they remained until 1945. Their son, Harold James, was born there in 1921, followed by another daughter, Marjorie Lillian (my mother) in 1924.

In 1932, prior to the general availability of antibiotics, their daughter, Evelyn, fell ill at the age of 14 with a severe flu. She died soon after in hospital, officially of pneumonia.
Harry and Mina eventually purchased a home in an area known as "the Quarries" which would later become part of the City of Ottawa and is now a very populated part of town. They lived there until Harry's death in January 1961.

During most of his time in Ottawa Harry worked repairing gas meters for what was then the Ottawa Gas Company. From what I have heard, he was instrumental in starting the union there, and succeeded in getting sick leave and other benefits implemented for the workers. I believe he worked at the gas company until he retired, probably at age 65.
His brother, Philip, had apparently been planning a trip to Canada in the summer of 1960. After my father died suddenly in May of that year, a decision was made not to tell the family in England for fear that Phil might cancel his trip. I'm very glad for that decision as the brothers had a chance to see each other for the first time in almost half a century, and for the last time in their lives. Harry would pass just a few months later, and Phil only a few years after that.

BTW, Denis Wilkey, son of Albert and Eliza (also called "Lylie") and his wife, Betty, also emigrated to Canada, but didn't have any children. They lived in Pierrefords, a suburb of Montreal, for many years and then moved to New Hamburg, near Stratford in southern Ontario once Denis retired. Betty died in 2005 and Denis in 2016.

With grateful thanks to Janet Tomlinson